Post-Obama call, India still seeks differentiation in the Paris agreement

Revised draft released; countries get into as huddle with overnight negotiations on the cards

A day after the conversation between US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India continued to demand differentiation as a cardinal principle in the Paris agreement.

While the two worked together on some issues in a bilateral format to seek solutions, the Indian negotiators speaking in closed door meetings did not budge from the need of operationalising the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities across all elements of the Paris agreement. Union environment and forests minister Prakash Javadekar said as much in his statement to the media.

As the revised agreement of the Paris draft began being distributed, the countries planned their discussions within respective groupings and the hosts announced that the countries would recongregate at 8 pm to negotiate to sort remaining issues through the night.

Two negotiators who have engaged respective countries in bilaterals said the US had focused intensely on the issue of transparency mechanisms. Transparency mechanism refers to the manner in which countries measure and report their climate actions and how these actions are verified. India and most other developing countries have insisted that the legal obligations of the developed world should face much higher levels of scrutiny than the voluntary contributions of the developing world. But the US has insisted that there should be complete symmetry between developed and developing countries the transparency mechanism for all countries except for the Least Developed Countries.

“Having the same level of scrutiny is a Trojan horse to force away differentiation without saying so in as much words in the agreement,” explained a negotiator from the Like-Minded Developing countries.

The Paris agreement presents a difficult challenge for India in the last 3 days. With the developed countries having shown no inclination to increase their pre-2020 emission reduction targets and the commitment on finance and technology continuing to be vague, the only thing India looks to now secure is the carbon space on the basis of equity. While it has demanded a carbon-budget approach which requires apportionment of carbon space on the basis of historical emissions, which  too remains difficult to achieve in the face of united US and EU opposition. In which case, it at best, would be able to maintain a clear line of differentiation between developed and developing world in the quality of efforts and responsibilities on different fronts under the Paris agreement.

“To put it simply if the countries with historical responsibilities and required to take the leadership under the convention are required to do X then the rest should be required to do only X minus,” explained one negotiator. “In each of the elements of the Paris agreement – mitigation, adaptation, finance, compliance, transparency and technology – it would be reflected in different terms but the differential between the two sets of countries should be explicit,” he explained.

“We can talk about some convergences in the distant future but that is a decision best left to the future,” he added.