NEW DELHI: For India, the battle on Kyoto Protocolat the Durban climate talks beginning on Monday boils down to ensuring the global community does not impose an unjust tax on its energy and growth.

At the two-week long talks between 195 countries, the fate of Kyoto Protocol - already on a lifeline - will decide if India's citizens end up paying an unfairly higher price for energy, oil, gas, coal and renewables in the near future. It will also decide how much longer it might take for 4 million Indians living without power to see bulbs light up their villages.

If the developed world has its way, India and other emerging economies will have to undertake binding and disproportionate greenhouse gas emission reduction targets by 2015. And as any economist will tell, beyond a certain level, emission reduction targets lead to the costs of energy going up in the country. For a country with one of the highest level of taxes on energy and around 4 million people without power, it could mean a globally imposed tax on development and growth.

This would be a fair tax if India was as much responsible as the developed countries for causing the problem. It is not. It has one of the lowest per capita emissions for emerging economies. Yet it has taken steps to reduce its future dependence on fossil fuels. It has undertaken economy-wide actions to improve efficiency of its industries and sectors. Its solar policy alone - among the most ambitious in the world - will cost Rs 75,000 crore over the next decade, a subsidy to solar power generators that could instead have been invested in coal or other fossil fuels. It already spends nearly 2.6% of its GDP in programmes that help the poor develop and adapt.

But if the rich countries get their way at Durban, the burden could increase disproportionately and could become an international obligation for India.

The developed world wants to forget the existing stock of GHGs in the atmosphere that it has accumulated; it alone is responsible for 70%. The Kyoto Protocol is the only tool within the UN convention that ensures the burden between countries is shared based on this historical fact. The rich countries prefer to forget history (and science) and instead tax the emerging economies for its future crimes - emissions it will spew in coming years. This would ensure the emerging economies share an unequal burden.

Once the principle of equity, that all citizens have equal rights to global resources on the planet or in the atmosphere, is dispensed with alongside the Kyoto Protocol, there would be no fair formula to decide who bears the costs of fixing the planet. A new global treaty would be fought over afresh with new rules, with chances of an even deal being near non-existent.

India, along with the other developing countries, should have been asking for reparation for the poor that have been imperiled by inevitable climate change. Instead, it is now left with, at best, the space to defend its right to growth: right to atmospheric space that permits its economy to better.

India's options at the Durban talks are rather simple - agree to take on binding commitments starting 2015 without a burden-sharing formula in place or later, once the rich have accepted that history and science need to guide decisions.