The annual United Nations climate change conference, which was held at Warsaw, Poland from November 11 to 22, started with an emotional appeal from the Philippine negotiator Yeb Sano, who declared that he would be fasting ‘until a meaningful outcome is in sight’ in the wake of the ‘staggering’ devastation from Typhoon Haiyan in his country.
Describing the climate change crisis as madness he said, “We can stop this madness right here in Warsaw.” But the last 10 days has seen little progress on key problems of reducing greenhouses gases, pledging funds for the $100 billion Green Climate Fund, and coming up with financing to address climate-related ‘loss and damages.’ The talks took a big blow when Japan announced a steep lowering of its emission reduction target to 3.8 per cent from 2005 levels, which in effect is a 3.1 per cent increase in emissions from its 1990 levels. Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s chief negotiator, discussed with
Betwa Sharma of INYT the old and new stumbling blocks as delegations from 189 countries attempt to draft a new climate change treaty by 2015.
Everyone was moved by Yeb Sano’s speech calling for action. Has there been any progress?
I would say not much progress has really taken place. Negotiations have moved a bit towards a new architecture for climate change for the 2015 agreement. There is a broad understanding in what would be included in the text, which will get into the 2015 agreement.
What is that broad understanding?
Parties are looking for the six elements of adaptation, mitigation, finance, technology transfer, capacity building and transparency.
But these elements have always been part of the climate talks. Have there been any specific developments since the talks in Doha last year?
Climate change talks are long drawn and will continue in the future. After the Durban talks in 2011, work has started to look at a new agreement which will inform enhanced action – how do you have better action to combat climate change? Then in Doha we had the second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol. Some countries have made the pledges and some countries are yet to ratify so there is talk of movement on those lines also. So there has been some movement but not on the lines of enhanced mitigation action that was expected from the developed country parties.
What does India want from this round of talks in Warsaw?
Warsaw would have sent a good signal if we had some clear-cut decisions on finance. There was a decision to set up a Green Climate Fund about three years back, but still the Green Climate Fund is trying to work out the modalities and structures.
So is there any amount of the $100 billion in the bag?
The Green Climate Fund is empty right now.
There is a push by developed countries towards private agencies being involved in climate finance? Why does India see this as a problem?
Green Climate Fund as of now was supposed to funded by government agencies, public funding. But developed countries want you to provide a level playing field or an enabling environment for private sector investment. How do 190 countries provide a level playing field? How do you harmonise policies over 190 countries? It is not possible. Basically these are tactics to shift the discussion from what they are supposed to provide to something that is unpredictable.
How is India feeling the impact of climate change?
We have seen variations in rainfalls, we have seen a rise in temperature patterns. We have had extreme weather events and all kinds of problems associated with climate change. We have had problems in agriculture.
“Loss and damages” is a contested issue this year. Does India like other developing countries want separate funds pledged for this, and does it need this foreign aid?
It should be different from the $100 billion. It is not a question of aid. There are various kinds of risk resilience mechanisms in the works. Do you know why the disaster in Odisha was handled well? We had good forecasting systems and models for predictions. So we have been working on handling disasters and risk resilience and this would be something that would be part of loss and damage.
The EU’s goal is cut down emission by 20 per cent on 1990 levels and the United States’ goal is to cut by 17 per cent from 2005 levels. Has there been any change in this scenario?
The problem is that even what they (developed countries) have promised, they are not doing. Actually, if you look at the emission profiles of these countries, they had already achieved those kinds of figures. So what they pledged was much less ambitious then what they could have done. Even the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) fourth report had clearly indicated that the reductions should be around 40-50 per cent. Their ambitions are very low.
As of now, does India have any international commitments to combat climate change, and what steps is it taking domestically?
We had made this voluntary commitment of reducing our emission intensity by 20-25 per cent by 2020. That commitment remains and we are working on it. If you look at our domestic actions, we have done a lot on energy efficiency. Our Bureau of Energy Efficiency is coming out with efficiency standards and we have a new scheme called PAT (Perform Achieve and Trade), which is becoming operational. From the national level we have moved on to state level – 22 states have formulated their action plans on climate change and hope all will be on board by end of March next year.
With the current pace of the talks –how confident do you feel that a global climate change treaty will be finalized by 2015 in Paris?
If parties don’t do what they are supposed to do under the treaty then it is an empty treaty.
