A US-brokered deal with four emerging economies, including India, on climate change that places no legally-binding emission cuts on developed nations ran into rough weather today with a majority of poor countries rejecting it, saying that it was one-sided.
The deal between the US and
BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) bloc is apparently a gain for developed countries which are required under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to take legally-binding emission cuts.
The Protocol expires on 2012 and the 194-nation Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations in Copenhagen has apparently failed to get a word on its extension.
Indian negotiators -- Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and Prime Minister's Special Envoy on Climate Shyam Saran -- themselves acknowledged the fact that the deal is not done until it is approved by the plenary. However, Ramesh claimed that it was "a good deal."
"Right now we have a document that says that we continue with negotiations on what to do about the future, including the Bali Action Plan and Kyoto Protocol," Saran said.
Angry delegates of many countries like Tuvalu, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Venezuela and Cuba slammed the US-BASIC deal for showing them great "disrespect" by leaving them out of the drafting process and imposing their document on vast majority.
Cuban delegates said that US President Barack Obama, who brokered the US-BASIC deal, was "behaving like an emperor" and claimed that the draft was a "gross violation of principle of sovereign equality."
Echoing Ramesh's views, UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said it is yet to be seen how the text will be received by other countries.
"I think we need to see how the text is received by the broader group of countries. It is great that a small group of leaders get together and tries to advance the process but ultimately the way things work here it has to acceptable to everyone," he said.
The agreement between the US and BASIC countries requires industrial countries to list their individual targets and developing countries to list the actions they will take to cut global warming pollution by specific amounts.
Obama noted that he worked throughout the day with Prime Ministers of Ethiopia, China and India and Presidents of Brazil and South Africa "to achieve what I believe will be an important milestone."
He said taken together these actions will help us begin to meet our responsibilities to "leave our children and our grandchildren a cleaner and safer planet."
"Now, this progress did not come easily, and we know that this progress alone is not enough. Going forward, we're going to have to build on the momentum that we've established here in Copenhagen to ensure that international action to significantly reduce emissions is sustained and sufficient over time," the US President said.
"We've come a long way, but we have much further to go," he said.