Jairam battles to keep India out of emission cuts

Tuesday was crunch time at the UN climate conference here, with some heads of state and government already beginning to fly into the Danish capital for the final leg of the fortnight-long negotiations. A flurry of closed door meetings between key players tried to iron out differences but as of this evening, there were scant signs of any breakthrough in the deadlocked talks.

Although developing countries, including India, have been insisting that negotiating is not the business of heads of state and government, it increasingly looks like a political push will be needed from world leaders if the talks are not to end in failure.

India’s priority is to ensure the concept of a peaking year for global emissions applicable to developing countries does not make it into any final version of the draft accords currently being negotiated, environment minister Jairam Ramesh told Business Standard on Tuesday.

“For me, fighting the idea of a peaking year is the single biggest priority and it’s what I am expending all my political capital on right now,” he said.

The minister said he had had three meetings with Aosis (Association of Small Island States) countries, represented most vocally by Tuvalu, who have been insisting the major developing economies must also make commitments to peak their emissions.

“We hope to arrive at some understanding with them (Aosis) by tomorrow (Wednesday),” Ramesh said, adding that while India was willing to consider their demand of limiting global warming to less than two degrees Centigrade, this agreement would only come on the condition of equitable access to carbon space.

Ramesh said it was India’s position that a half-baked draft could not be presented to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he flew into Copenhagen on Thursday. “Heads of state should not be negotiating drafts and texts,” he said. However, the European Union and the United States have been of the opposite view, saying a political push is needed to drive the talks forward. The idea being that heads of state are able to rise above the divergences that have confounded negotiators and deliver an “ambitious” deal.

Industrialised countries have also been pushing for the current talks to end in a single political agreement that would lay the foundations of a new protocol to replace Kyoto, one placing more stringent requirements on the big developing countries.

Ramesh said he had been assured by Danish environment minister Connie Hedegaard that it was the two UN texts that would in fact be signed at the end of the week, one on the continuation of the Kyoto protocol and the second on long-term cooperative action, to run along side Kyoto as a means of bringing the notoriously recalcitrant US on board.

However, there is widespread suspicion in the Basic (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) camp that the EU and Australia will reintroduce the notorious Danish proposal that seeks to undo the differential responsibilities assigned to developing and developed countries under the Kyoto protocol.

As a result, while India is currently focusing on the two UN draft texts, Ramesh added that Basic countries also have their own draft “up their sleeves in case of a googly bowled by the Danes or Europeans at the last minute”.

Several seemingly intractable issues still remained before the two draft proposals could be presented to top political leaders. Ramesh said the greatest sticking point was, at the moment, on the issue of MRVs (monitoring, reporting and verification) for the domestic commitments that developing countries have been making to reduce their energy intensity.

“The EU and US are really digging in their heels on the whole MRV issue, particularly with respect to China. India is not really in the firing line,” Ramesh explained. The US has been insisting that the lack of stringent verification of China’s climate mitigation actions could be a deal-breaker.

Beijing, which like India rejects international verification of its nationally announced mitigation measures, attacked rich countries on Tuesday, accusing them of backsliding on their obligations.

Jiang Yu, a foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing, said there had been “some regression” on the part of developed countries on their position regarding financial support. The change in their position “will hamper the Copenhagen conference”, the spokesperson said.

The issue of medium and long-term financing for developing countries to help them battle the effects of climate change is the other major issue, yet to see any firm figures put on the table by the developed nations.