India bid to have Kyoto-like treaty faces resistance at UN

After failing to save Kyoto Protocol, India is fighting to include protection differentiated responsibility enshrined in the protocol in the proposed climate treaty to defeat the call of the rich countries of having mandatory emission reduction target for all nations.

Updated on: Oct 4, 2011, 02:03:03 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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After failing to save Kyoto Protocol, India is fighting to include protection differentiated responsibility enshrined in the protocol in the proposed climate treaty to defeat the call of the rich countries of having mandatory emission reduction target for all nations.

Australia and Norway have proposed a new agreement seeking emission reduction targets for all countries on basis of their global warming causing carbon dioxide emissions.

They have set a target of 2015 to make the agreement operational. The proposal calls on major economies to quickly strengthen steps to curb emissions, agree on a way to standardise actions and a system to compare and verify what everyone else is doing.

The proposal was opposed by India this week at the United Nations climate talks in Panama City on the ground that the bid of the historical polluters, the rich nations, to have one emission reduction regime for all was not acceptable.

"They (rich nations) cannot ask the recent emitters like India and China to take on the responsibility of cutting emissions," said an Indian

negotiator, while outlining country's position on the issue.

Instead, India had urged the UN body of 195 nations to adopt a new climate agreement which have basic tenements of the Kyoto Protocol --- mandatory emission reduction target for the rich nations and voluntary emission control measures for the developing world.

There will be a lot of difficulty in getting the Indian proposal through at the conference of 195 nations with other many developing countries are not willing to support India fully.

There is a division in G-77 plus China, the most powerful group in UN climate talks, with several African countries seeking some emission reduction target for the emerging economies.

Even South Africa, which is part of the Basic group of India, China and Brazil, is not openly supporting India as it wants to be seen as a country leading the cause of Africa in climate talks.

Unlike the divided developed world, the rich nations are united in seeking a uniform climate treaty. The European Union had again changed its goalpost and is towing the line of United States and Australia, the two nations which did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Till now the European Union has not debunked Kyoto Protocol but at Panama City they openly supported the Australian-Norway proposal, which also has backing of other rich nations such as Canada and Japan.

Their aim is to check economic growth of emerging economies such as India and China through emissions regulations under the UN climate convention.

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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