Basic nations drift away from Copenhagen

Less than two months after agreeing to the Copenhagen accord, India, China, Brazil and South Africa, or Basic countries, have moved away from the accord in their communication on domestic mitigation action submitted to the UN, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 3, 2010, 01:03:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Less than two months after agreeing to the Copenhagen accord, India, China, Brazil and South Africa, or Basic countries, have moved away from the accord in their communication on domestic mitigation action submitted to the UN.

Till end of January, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) received national pledges to cut and limit greenhouse gases by 2020 from 55 countries, which account for 78 per cent of total global emissions from energy use.

The Basic countries were among the 26 nations that formulated the accord which Copenhagen conference took note of. “We support Copenhagen accord,” Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh said after a meeting with ministers of Basic countries on January 24.

Things have changed since then.

“Any domestic mitigation action can only be under UNFCCC,” said an environment ministry official. “Copenhagen accord has to be part of the UN negotiations process under the Long term Cooperative Action (LCA) and Kyoto Protocol negotiating tracks.”

Welcoming the move, Raman Mehta of Climate Action Network South Asia said: “I think India and China have realised they have either been misled or cheated. There is a definite rethink on what the accord is going to achieve. Nothing. They have released that UN is the best way to move forward”.

The deviation from Copenhagen primarily happened because rich countries had assured Basic nations that they would get the accord approved at the UN conference at Copenhagen but that did not happen. Latin American countries such as Venezuela and some African nations such as Sudan opposed the accord. Under UNFCCC, all nations have to agree for a decision.

With the accord going for a toss, the rich countries — mandated to reduce emissions under Kyoto Protocol — have submitted targets that could lead to increase in global temperature by minimum three degree Celsius by 2050.

“The commitments would mean catastrophe for South Asia, Africa and the island nations,” sad Shirish Sinha, head of NGO World Wide Fund for nature.

Even in the accord, the rich countries had agreed to limit the temperature rise by 2 degree Celsius. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of UNFCCC, said “greater ambition is required to meet the climate challenge” but termed the pledges as signals of willingness to move negotiations towards a successful conclusion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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