Unfortunately, the whole climate change debate has been jargonised, which I suspect is quite deliberate since it helps obfuscate the real common-sense issues. The accord, for instance, remains completely silent on the per capita emission levels
Now that the dust has settled on the Paris climate accord and we have had time to reflect on the hard realities of the agreement rather than the glossy projections in the largely western-dominated world media, it is pertinent to ask as to what the accord has achieved for India. It is being argued by various learned commentators that the accord could have turned out to be much worse and that we were spared mandatory cuts on our emission levels and hence it is a case for relief, if not celebration! Surely, that is a rather defeatist approach which can hardly safeguard our key interests in international negotiations.
We would be naive in assuming that giving up on our key concerns in the name of facilitating consensus on one issue would result in our better accommodation by big powers in other perhaps more important issues such as the permanent membership of the UN Security Council. The world stage is devoid of morality or ideology and we have no alternative but to assertively protect our national interests utilising all available leverages without any fear of isolation.
Unfortunately, the whole climate change debate has been jargonised, which I suspect is quite deliberate since it helps obfuscate the real common-sense issues. The accord, for instance, remains completely silent on the per capita emission levels. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission is a result of aggregate human activity and it therefore stands to reason that the only yardstick to benchmark the performance of different nations has to be based on per capita levels of emission where we rank far better than the developed countries simply because our per capita energy consumption is still less than one tenth of that in the USA. Nearly half of our people have no access to commercial energy. What is wrong if they were to aspire for better lifeIJ We need sustained high level of economic growth in our country to drive out the poverty and this would mean higher energy consumption and consequently higher emission levels. We have a right to development at affordable costs and that cannot be compromised for a climate accord which brings us hardly any benefits. Abandoning the per capita benchmark on this issue would be as wrong as accepting any blame on India for lack of food security in certain part of the world because of high aggregate food consumption in our country given our large population!
The Paris accord has blurred the distinction between developed and developing countries with regard to the causing of pollution in the past and thus the responsibility to pay for the remedial action. This has been the most fundamental guiding principle of all previous accords and understandings on climate change discourse. Its weakening has disturbing implications for the developing countries. Paris accord requires, for the first time, developing countries too to pledge mitigation actions which are bound to be closely monitored. On the other hand, developed countries have gotten away without any legally binding emission cuts which were provisioned in the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. Surely, the global political and economic landscape has undergone a transformation in the last 20 years with the emergence of large developing economies such as China, India and Brazil. But that does not alter the fact relating to the historical culpability of the developed countries in having brought our mother earth to the precipice of disaster.
The most disappointing development has been in the area of financial support to be provided to the developing countries for meeting requisite adaptation and mitigation measures. At Copenhagen, in 2009, developed countries had promised to “raise funds of $30 billion from 2010-2012 of new and additional resources” and had further committed themselves collectively to a “goal” of $100 billion per year by 2020. But hardly any actual transfer of resources seems to have taken place so far. The Paris accord doesn’t impose any binding targets on the developed countries in this regard and leaves this matter entirely to their voluntary discretion. In fact, the figure of $100 billion per annum doesn’t even find any mention in the actual agreement.
Developed countries have consistently sought to broaden the definition of “financial support” by seeking to include commercial capital flows. It is ironic to count these as financial assistance since such investments are part of routine commercial transactions and made with a view to earning profits. In fact, developed countries seem to be more interested in securing economic opportunities for their business entities from application of new environment friendly technologies in the developing countries as a result of the pressure generated by the Paris accord. Focus of their effort is clearly to dodge their responsibility, also by partly shifting the burden unfairly to large developing countries.
Adoption of new environment friendly technologies entails considerable additional expenditure and it was generally accepted when the climate change negotiations began that it would not be fair to impose that financial burden on the developing countries. In this background, the promise of financial support by developed countries has to be seen as an obligation arising out of their historical emissions and any dilution of that principle negates the very basis on which the climate change negotiations were founded. In fact, in the absence of adequate funding support, developing countries whether small or big would find it difficult to afford high magnitude of expenditure required.
Article 10 of the agreement dealing with technology transfer calls upon state parties to “strengthen cooperative action on technology development and transfer” but does not outline any credible and effective mechanism to facilitate that. Governments at best can provide modest funding support for R&D, but we all know of the limitations on that. Actual technology development is a matter of innovation which would largely take place in the private sector domain and developing countries would require huge funds to access relevant new technologies. As such any assertion about technology transfer is no more than an empty rhetoric. What is critical is the requisite funding support from developed country governments. Unfortunately, available indications do not inspire much hope in that area.
Our Government has laid out a bold roadmap by declaring its intention to increase the share of electricity production from renewable resources to 40 per cent of the total installed capacity by 2030 even though it was not quite necessary given the relative low cost of coal-based power at least for the foreseeable future. That would have certainly pleased the developed countries. One can only hope that with solar power tariffs continuing to decline by the day with increasing R&D, and having already come below Rs 5 per unit in a well publicised bid by the American firm SunEdison for a project in Andhra Pradesh, our investment in solar energy could well prove beneficial to us in the long run.
(The writer is a former Ambassador)