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| The wolf and the lamb | | Let's align the blame game with the facts |
| Business Standard / New Delhi Nov 18, 2009, 00:13 IST |
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So the Copenhagen summit on climate change has been killed even before it has started. The US and other countries have formally recognised that the summit next month will not achieve its basic objective of working out a post-Kyoto accord on future commitments with regard to the emission of greenhouse gases. The rich countries, aware of their role in bringing about this denouement, have been trying for weeks to pin the blame on China and India, but this attempt is so blatantly at variance with the facts that no one is fooled. The nails began to get hammered into Copenhagen’s coffin at the preparatory meeting in Thailand last month, when the rich countries made it clear for the first time that they wanted to dump the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, with its binding commitments on emission reductions, and work on a new slate where basic fairness would not be an operating principle. This became even more clear at the subsequent meeting in Barcelona, last week, which forced the developing world to toughen its stance.
The unquestionable facts are that the rich countries have increased their emissions since the reference year of 1990, instead of reducing them; and that the commitments on reduction are legally enforceable obligations that come with penalties for non-compliance. It is also manifestly the case that Copenhagen was a dead event once the US Senate said it would not consider a domestic law on emissions control until next year, so that the US negotiators would be going to Copenhagen with an empty briefcase. That automatically meant that the European Union would not begin to deal. In such a context, what the developing countries were willing or not willing to do was irrelevant.
Somewhat divorced from this sequence of events, the western drumbeat for the last several months has been that a new accord would stand or fall on the issue of whether China and India were willing to take on internationally binding commitments on emission control and reduction. Gullible Indian interlocutors have fallen for this diversionary line and argued that India should be a “deal-maker” instead of a “deal-breaker”, language that sidesteps the basic question of what kind of deal is on offer. It is, of course, understandable that India does not want to be isolated in the negotiations, or to be seen as recalcitrant. India has, therefore, moved on a domestic agenda, and promised internationally to not cross the emission level of other countries. Beyond this, there comes a point when the pot has to stop calling the kettle black, and that time has come. What that means is that India’s interlocutors have to tell their developed country counterparts that, unlike in the fable, it does not work for the wolf to blame the lamb downstream for polluting its drinking water. India’s negotiators also have to be on guard so that the supposedly non-binding political statement of objectives that the Copenhagen summit will now focus on, does not introduce new pressure points that can later be used against India.
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