India must hold the red line as global climate action continues to weaken

In a world of transactional inter-state relations, India must stay firm on issues of national interest, no matter the pressures

After a disappointing outcome at the 30th Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Belem in November 2025, there is not much to look forward to in the forthcoming COP 31 meeting in Antalya in Turkey in November. From the high point reached in 1992 at the Rio de Janeiro climate summit, the trajectory of multilateral climate action has been steadily downhill. Antalya is unlikely to be an exception to this inexorable trend. 

As India’s chief negotiator on climate change, I attended COP 15 in Copenhagen in December 2009, more than 18 years ago. The Copenhagen Accord, adopted late at night on the last day of the conference, was the result of a last-minute compromise reached between the United States President Barack Obama on the one hand and leaders of the BASIC nations (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) on the other. In retrospect, and in the light of subsequent developments, I believe that the BASIC countries should have remained firm on their stand that the mandate for the negotiations given by the 13th COP held at Bali in December 2007, should be strictly adhered to. 

The Bali Road Map had taken cognisance of the 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned that global climate change had become a more urgent and deeper challenge than had been reported earlier and that this called for the “enhanced implementation of the principles and provisions of the UNFCCC”.  The enhanced implementation was in respect of “4 pillars” — mitigation, adaptation, finance and technology. These  ought to figure in a global climate change agreement, through multilateral negotiations under the UNFCCC, over a two-year period, culminating in COP 15. 

During the negotiating process, however, the US played the role of a spoiler, proposing major deviations from the Bali consensus and the UNFCCC itself. These included erasing the clear distinction between the commitments of the developed industrialised countries and those of the constituency of developing countries. This would have effectively overturned the key principle of equitable burden sharing, the well-known Common but Differentiated Responsibility and Respective Capabilities — the CBDR principle. 

The US also opposed the strict compliance procedure laid down in the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC, adopted in 1997. Instead of numerical targets for reduction in greenhouse gases by each developed country, subject to a strict compliance procedure, including penalties for shortfalls, the US proposed a voluntary Pledge and Review system with no penalties for non-performance. 

The US also rejected any binding commitments for providing finance and technology to enable developing countries to undertake climate action, which were key elements of the Bali consensus. 

It was unwilling to accept the principle of historical responsibility embedded in the UNFCCC, which acknowledged that the industrialised countries had been responsible for most of the greenhouse gases accumulated in the earth’s atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial age in the 19th century and hence must take the lead in climate action. This was fundamental to the notion of equity and equitable burden sharing. 

In short, the US took a wrecking ball to the entire edifice of the UNFCCC and the Copenhagen Accord proved to be the thin end of the wedge, enabling a relentless attrition process to the detriment of developing countries, which is still in play. 

The Accord compromised the firewall in the UNFCCC between the developed and developing countries with differential commitments. At that fateful meeting with Mr Obama, the BASIC group agreed that there could be “international consultation and analysis” of their climate action under the UNFCCC, similar to the procedure already included for the developed countries. From this, the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015 moved to universal applicability, which the US had promoted assiduously all through the post-Copenhagen rounds of negotiations. 

The promise to declare nationally determined commitments (NDCs) on mitigation, which are voluntary in nature but subject to a stocktake every five years, is applicable to all states parties to the Paris Agreement. The voluntary nature of commitments means that the developed countries cannot be held accountable for not meeting even the progressively diminished targets on providing finance and technology to enable developing countries to undertake climate action. 

The Paris Agreement also marked the end of BASIC acting as an influential negotiating group. In the run-up to Paris, the US and China agreed to a set of principles for their bilateral declaration on climate action, which then became the template for Paris. The most pernicious was the dilution of the CBDR principle to which the words “according to national circumstances” were added and which found its way into the Paris Agreement. 

This implied that each country could interpret and apply CBDR as it deemed appropriate to itself. A legal principle of equity was reduced to a discretionary commitment. India did not oppose it. 

The compromise BASIC countries made in the Copenhagen Accord unleashed an attrition process that eventually led to the much-diluted Paris Agreement. The US got virtually all that it set out to achieve — the evisceration of the UNFCCC — and then happily walked out, twice over, even from these meagre commitments. 

It is important to go back and reflect on the climate negotiations as they unfolded over the 2007-2015 period and beyond. Through the various rounds of negotiations leading up to Copenhagen, India had drawn a red line on the integrity of the UNFCCC. India’s position at the negotiations was portrayed as being rigid, negative and standing in the way of arriving at a consensus. All that India was insisting upon was not some unique Indian position but holding the developed countries to their own solemn commitments enshrined in the UNFCCC. 

There were occasions when one had to remind those who wanted India “to be part of the solution and not the problem” that on an issue of national interest and in upholding the principle of equity, India had often preferred to stand alone. The refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty are good examples. We drew a red line and stuck to it despite the considerable pain this entailed. In a world of transactional inter-state relations and mindful of the US record of chipping away at the positions of its negotiating partners and then walking out with no commitments upon itself, there is merit in holding the line on key issues of national interest, no matter what the pressures. 

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The writer is a former foreign secretary