Developing nations lose out in climate change talks: CSE

According to CSE, the key expectations out of the recently concluded Warsaw climate talks were three-fold

Developing countries have lost out on all the key areas of UN climate change negotiations at Warsaw as the developed nations managed to shift the burden of reducing emissions on to the emerging economies like India and China, a leading green NGO said today.

According to the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), the key expectations out of the recently concluded Warsaw climate talks were three-fold.

"One, to agree on a timeline towards the 2015 agreement and a draft negotiating text to that effect; two, to institutionalise a mechanism on loss and damage as agreed in the climate talks held in 2012 at Doha; and three, gain clarity on climate finance by developed countries.

"But developing countries lost out on all the three fronts," said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general, CSE.

He said that the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) between the developed and developing countries has been further diluted at Warsaw.

"Under the Ad-hoc Working Group on Durban Platform (ADP), all countries, including the developing countries, will now have to submit nationally determined contributions to tackle climate change. But there is no mention that the contributions will be based on CBDR or equity," said Bhushan, an Indian climate expert.

CBDR principle establishes that developed countries, which had been able to develop for longer times unimpeded by environmental restrictions, need to take a greater share of responsibility.

Warsaw also witnessed developed countries like Japan and Australia reneging on their emissions reduction commitments made under the Cancun Agreement and their promise of delivering $100 billion Green Climate Fund per year by 2020 remains a distant dream.

"The Green Climate Fund, established to coordinate climate finance, has little money in it. No timeline could be agreed upon at Warsaw. The call from developing countries to give US $70 billion by 2016 was ignored. Instead, a trivial sum of $100 million for the Adaptation Fund was all that the developed countries could promise at Warsaw," Bhushan said.