Only slowly are the main features of what came out of the Durban conference on climate change becoming apparent. This is not unusual with a vast, complex exercise like the one just conclude where a multiplicity of interests and interest groups were brought together over some days of intense and bewildering negotiation. Even for participants, let alone observers, it would have been difficult to know what was going on and how the work in the myriad conclaves within the conference added up. The meeting was not quite concluded when many appreciative reports were received from the venue about the important role of India. The accounts indicated that the Indian deligation had defended its position effectively and the Minister leading the delegation had earned kudos through her forthright presentation of the country’s legitimate needs. Others, including China, had rallied round, and, with India giving the lead, no retreat was permitted from the benchmarks established at Kyoto nearly fifteen years ago based on equity and differentiated obligations for developed and developing countries. However, other reports described India and China as having been isolated and more or less obliged to accept the final text even though it contained some unwelcome features. Thus so far as India was concerned, the conference outcome appears to have been something of a mixed bag.
In point of fact, India have been fighting a rearguard action ever since the Kyoto conference of 1997. This mandated global action on climate change but demanded more of the developed countries which had largely created the problem in the first instance, than of developing countries that were on the path of industrialization. This USA agreed to these provisions at the conference but soon thereafter had second thoughts: it never ratified the Kyoto decisions and then led an assault aimed at undoing what had been agreed. India and China were presented as major polluters who should not have been given any special consideration and should have been required to conform to the same standards as applied to the industrially advanced countries, the sole relevant criterion being the amount of polluting emissions they released. These two countries resisted of course and insisted that international commitments should be honoured. The principle of equity was invoked and with it firm assertion of the rule ‘polluter pays’ to highlight the historic damage done by the industrialized world. Thus there were problems from the start and the conference decisions could hardly be translated into effective action.
Much has happened since India and, especially, China have become major factors in the global economy. Their industrial activity has spurted, and with it the impact on the environment, while agreed transfers of technology and funds from industrially advanced countries to mitigate the environmental consequences have not taken place. Meanwhile, new standards for environmental protection have taken shape, notably the need to ensure that global warming must not exceed two degrees Celsius by 2050 if irreversible damage is to be avoided. Sometimes even experts come a cropper in the complexities of the issues, as with the report on the retreat of Himalayan glaciers which made alarming projections that had to be repudiated. But notwithstanding such episodes, it is not possible any longer to argue, as several scientists did in an earlier period, that global warming is largely a myth. Awareness of climate issues has become more or less universal and the Greens have entered the mainstream to acquire a much greater say in policy making, especially in Europe. With that, the particular provisions applicable to major developing countries agreed at Kyoto have become less attainable. Smaller countries in the group of island developing countries and the LDCs (least developed countries) are not persuaded that it is in their best interest to maintain solidarity with the more prominent developing countries. This shift in global perceptions may have influenced Indian representatives both at the previous climate meeting at Copenhagenand at the recent one in Durban eventually to go along with a consensus that did not fully meet their needs and expectations.
Reports from Durban indicated that the conference room powerhouse was the EU. The USA was content to keep a low profile and leave to others to take the lead, even through it has been the most prominent critic of the decisions taken at Kyoto. Climate change is a troubled issue in the USA where Congress still contains many who do not wish to accept internationally mandated restrictions on their freedom of action, and with the presidential election now looming, nobdy seems to wish to get involved in what could be a divisive debate. The EU, having made considerable progress internally in reducing emissions, was able to carry smaller countries with it, especially those that feel particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Nor can it be ignored that reducing the solidarity of the developing countries, which are numerically much the largest group, is a familiar tactic of the advanced countries at the UN where the whole notion of the LDCs was initially developed as an institutional device to diminish developing country solidarity. In Durban, as the climax approached and the parleys became more hectic, nobody wished to be seen as a deal breaker ~ dreaded label at such a conference. So the talks were extended by a couple of days to enable last minute efforts at agreement, and eventually, after a few final adjustment, all the participants were able to agree to a final compromise text.
What comes next is now the question. All observers expect a hard slog ahead. After a relatively short breathing space. Negotiations. Will resume in workshops and other such settings to give flesh to the broad agreements that emerged at Durban. A deal binding on all is agreed, its detailed implications are to be worked out in negotiations that must conclude by 2015 and come into force in 2020. But already Canada. Has said it will withdraw, reportedly because it sees no alternative to developing its shale oil resources, which is energy intensive process that will not be manageable within the agreed emission limits.
And behind Canada looms the USA whose resolve, always fragile, might be affected by what its neighbour may decide to do. India has many issues to address in the talks ahead as a fresh consensus takes shape after some of the key provisions of Kyoto have been overtaken. There are no easy answers. Although Indian NGPs and other knowledgeable persons have been exercised about climate issues, the political parties have shown no particular interest. In the country’s public discourse, matters relating to climate change lack the salience they merit.
