Global Commons

The Financial Express (New Delhi), , Monday, February 06, 2012
Correspondent :
Twenty years after the global community adopted a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Rio, the Copenhagen-Cancun-Durban talks process seems to have arrived at a North-South stalemate, with developed countries demanding mandatory emission-control commitments from fast-growing emerging economies and the latter insisting that the former have failed to deliver on commitments reflecting their greater historical emissions and responsibilities. But the absence of a binding global treaty by no means suggests that protection of the Global Commons is absent. Corporates, policymakers and scientists all communicated this at Teri’s sustainable development summit. Bilateral treaties to protects forests and exchange renewable energy technologies are being signed, and companies are making unilateral commitments to sustainability. For example, machinery and engines maker Caterpillar has pursued remanufacturing to sell “same-as-when-new” products, which keep non-renewable resources in circulation for multiple lifetimes. Hindustan Unilever Limited has committed to reduce by half the environmental impact of all its consumer items and to source 100 per cent raw materials from certified sustainable sources by 2020. Innovations in fuel efficiency, waste management, green technologies et al are being fuelled by the private sector, which has not even proven averse to enthusiastically participating in carbon markets where available. But an important point that got stressed through the Teri summit was that industry support for sustainability really depends on policy stability. It’s not a good environment where every new government say reverses the tax incentives given by the previous government, where long-term goals aren’t given a firm casting.

It’s their government’s policy commitments to fuel efficiency dating back to the 1970s that have given Japanese auto manufacturers their clean cars edge. It’s because California has maintained fidelity to reducing greenhouse gases through various regime changes that the state is 40 per cent more energy efficient than the rest of the US. This point bears stressing if India is to truly benefit from ambitious schemes like the National Solar Mission.

 
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