Editorial. Sunita Narain. XI. XXX.XIV
Last call to get climate deal right
by Sunita Narain
The Indian government must not use “equity” to block climate change
negotiations. It must be proactive on equity and put forward a position
on how to operationalise the sharing of the carbon budget—accounting for
countries’ contribution to past emissions and allocating future space—in
climate talks.
I wrote this last year when the UPA government was in power. I am
repeating this as the NDA government prepares for the next conference of
parties (CoP) to be held in December in Peru.
Equity is a pre-requisite for an effective agreement on climate change.
In the early 1990s, as the negotiations began, Anil Agarwal,
environmentalist and director of the Centre for Science and Environment,
and I put forward the argument that since the atmosphere is a global
common, we need equal entitlements to the space. We argued the only way countries would commit to reducing emissions—connected to economic growth—would be if there were limits for all, based on contribution to the creation of the problem.
The 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is built on this
premise—the group of countries (Annex 1) responsible for creating the
problem must create space for the rest to grow. But since the objective
is to have a different growth pattern to avoid emissions of long-life
carbon dioxide, developing countries would get money and technology.
The current situation is very different. Countries which were required
to cut emissions did not do so at the scale or pace needed. The US
“peaked” its emissions in 2012. The situation is worse if the accounting
for emissions is done on the basis of consumption and not production. In
that case developed countries increased their emissions in this period
because all they did was to export manufacturing to other parts of the
world.
So the rich did not reduce emissions, while the rest of the world
increased. While in 1992, Annex 1 countries contributed some 70 per cent
of the emissions, by 2014, they are down to 40 per cent. The space is
filled and now there is little left for future growth of all. This is
where climate change negotiations are stuck.
The old rich want the differentiation between the past polluters and the
current and future ones to go. They say we should forget the historical
contribution and divide the carbon cake afresh. They remind developing
countries that the present is different—China, for instance, has
overtaken the US as the world’s largest contributor on an annual basis.
But they forget conveniently that on a per capita basis there is still a
vast difference between the US and China.
The “firewall” between Annex 1 and the rest, as called by US
negotiators, was first breached at the 2009 Copenhagen conference when
countries like India agreed not to discuss the historical contribution
of the already rich and put their own emission reduction targets on the
table. In 2011, this arrangement was cemented. The Durban CoP agreed
that the world would work to finalise a new agreement by 2015. This deal
would require the “highest possible mitigation efforts by all Parties”.
The only sweetener was the hard fought phrase that the agreement would
be under the “Convention”, which, in turn, is based on the principle of
equity.
But in the 2013 CoP at Warsaw it was agreed that “all” countries would
submit their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) by
early 2015. In other words, now there is no agreement which specifies
the target for each country based on its past contribution. Countries do
not put forward their emissions reduction targets based on common but
differentiated responsibility.
It is, however, argued (by top US negotiators) that the deal is based on
equity. This is because each country is free to decide domestic targets,
keeping in mind its contribution to the problem and its capacity to act.
Ingenious indeed. The game is, however, not over. The next step is to
put INDC together and to see how the aggregate of “all” adds to the
magic number needed to keep the temperature rise below 2°C, the
guardrail of devastating change. It is taken for granted that the sum of
all will be way below what is needed. Now the real question kicks in:
how to estimate the past, present and future emissions contribution of
each country to decide who will reduce how much emissions?
In Warsaw 2013, the African Group proposed an equity reference
framework, which has different indicators of development and capability
to assess what each country should do. India stridently opposed this. No
doubt, the African proposal has flaws, but our government has to put
forward a counter-proposal on how to operationalise equity. Otherwise,
equity is only for blocking consensus; empty word being banged in noisy
pans.
If we take climate change seriously, we will argue for an ambitious
agreement based on equity because that’s the only way it can be
effective. This is the last chance to get it right. The chips are
already down and the die will be cast by the time of the Paris meet in 2015.
