At the Doha Summit, India Pushes Developed Nations to Cut Emissions

Courtesy of Betwa SharmaSenior negotiator Meera Mehrishi addressing a press conference at the United Nations climate change conference in Doha, Qatar, on Thursday.

DOHA, Qatar - At the United Nations climate change talks in Doha, India is taking an active role in asking developed nations to commit to ambitious carbon dioxide emission cuts and pledge money to combat the global challenge.

Delegates from 194 countries are attending a two-week-long annual conference on climate change here, which concludes on Dec. 7.

So far, developed nations have been mostly unresponsive to India's push. The European Union has agreed to 20 percent carbon emission cuts from 1990 levels for the period of 2013 to 2020, a level that advocates for cuts say had already been pledged earlier. This time frame is known as the “second commitment period” of the Kyoto Protocol, which is the only legally binding treaty on climate change. Four developed countries â€" Japan, New Zealand, Canada and Russia â€" have already backed out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

“We are disappointed, however, that the developed countries are in the process of locking in low ambitions under this second commitment period,” Meera Mehrishi, India's chief negotiator, said Thursday. “We call on them to raise their level of ambition consistent with what is required by science.”

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated in a 2007 report that a 25 to 40 percent reduction of greenhouse gases from 1990 level s is needed to limit the earth's temperature rise to two degrees Celsius.

The United States, which is not a party to the Kyoto Protocol, remains firm on a position far from the goals the panel set: reducing carbon emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels, an estimated 4 percent from 1990 levels.

Developing countries, meanwhile, are pushing developed countries, in and out of the treaty, to take emission cuts of 30 to 40 percent compared to 1990 levels. Developed nations should shoulder the burden of climate change, developing nations believe, because of their share of historical carbon emissions as well as poorer nations' need to develop now.

Developing countries are of the view that climate change negotiations must be based on the principles of “equity” and “common but differentiated responsibility” in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted in 1992, from which these negotiations emerged.

Still, the rapid growth of developing nations like China, India, Brazil and South Africa over the last decade has led the developed countries to distance themselves from these principles. China, for instance, is now the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, followed by the United States.

So far, large developing countries have only agreed to voluntary reductions in their carbon intensity, that is, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per dollar generated by the country. India, for instance, has set a target of reducing emission intensity by 20 to 25 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.

Ms. Mehrishi noted that India's economic slowdown during the past year, from growth of almost 9 percent to just 5.5 percent, had resulted in a reduction of its emission intensity as well.

“It's just that the overall economic scenario in the world has also now impacted our country,” she said. “Earlier, we were quite comfortable, we do have a problem now.”

Meena Raman from the Third World Network, a n international climate advocacy organization, said that since European Union countries had already committed to 20 percent emission cuts so there have been no improvements during the Doha talks.

“What the E.U. is coming to Doha with is essentially to do nothing for the next eight years, and the United States refuses to even talk about reviewing its pledge and raising its ambitions,” she said.  “Developing countries across the board are very upset at the low level of ambition.”

Developing countries also see little progress on the goal of mobilizing $100 billion by 2020 for the issue.  The so-called Green Climate Fund, set up after the 2010 talks in Cancun, Mexico, has been referred to as an “empty shell” by some negotiators.

“We do not have any kind of really meaningful initial capitalization of the Green Climate Fund,” Bernarditas Muller, a negotiator from the Philippines, told delegates here. “Not a single cent that we could use in ord er to give to fulfill its functions of financing the needs of developing countries.”

At Doha, the United States is pushing the international community to focus on a post-2020 regime, agreed to at the 2011 climate talks at Durban, South Africa, which will legally bind both developed and developing nations to reduce their carbon emissions.

The European Union, meanwhile, agreed to extend the Kyoto Protocol, which would have ended this year, only after developing countries agreed to the post-2020 agreement called the Durban Platform.

While the Durban Platform opens up a new front for negotiations, developing countries want previous commitments under discussion since the 2007 climate talks in Bali, Indonesia, to be brought to a logical end.

Ms. Mehrishi stressed that India's agreement to the Durban Platform was based on reassurances that outstanding issues of mitigation, adaptation and technology under the Bali Action Plan would be addressed.  “We are therefore here in Doha to ensure that both of these are done satisfactorily,” she said.

China echoed India's sentiments.

“We need to make the necessary arrangements for the implementation of all the actions we had agreed to undertake,” Su Wei, China's chief negotiator, said this week.

The United States, however, is calling for a fresh start saying previous commitments only represented a bit more than 15 percent of global emissions.

“The task here at Doha is to close out the negotiations under the Bali round and to move on,” Jonathan Pershing, a senior negotiator from the United States, told the media this week.  “The new agreement must be built not for the world of 2007, when we adopted Bali, nor for 1997 or 1992, when we adopted the Kyoto Protocol and the convention respectively, but for the world of 2020 and beyond.”