DOHA: The negotiations at Qatar National Convention Centre have been a witness to a slow cleaving of ties between the 'allies' of Durban talks last year - the European Union (EU) and the association of 43 small island states or AOSIS.
The EU had forged an alliance with the AOSIS and least developed countries (LDCs) in Durban to evolve a consensus for a new global protocol which would break down the existing differential obligations of rich and poor countries and raise the emission reduction efforts.
The alliance won a partial victory with the Durban Platform being launched to finalize a new compact by 2015. But this time around, the alliance has soured a bit. The AOSIS continues to demand that all countries increase their emission reduction pledges immediately, but the EU has refused to up the 20% emission reduction target to be achieved between 2013 and 2020 under the Kyoto Protocol's second phase even though it has already achieved 18% of it. The EU has announced that it will not raise the pledge for the next few years.
The call for an increased ambition to reduce emissions from AOSIS has only got shriller. On Monday, they are expected to demand more from Europe and the US, who, in turn, have been seeking similar commitments from other emerging countries.
EU's allies in Durban were positioned publicly as the 'most vulnerable' and consequently took the high moral ground even as they asked for issues of equity and other climate convention principles to be diminished for the sake of urgency and 'ambition'. However, India, which went back to its original position of negotiations after a two-year hiatus, countered the charge, warning that more number of people remained under severe threat from climate change back home than most of AOSIS and LDCs clubbed together. In Doha, the two clauses of urgency and ambition from the same allies have come to haunt a reluctant EU.
