Mixed bag for India, EU the winner at Durban

Though environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan was hailed as a tough negotiator, the final Durban climate deal could at best be a mixed bag for India with European Union as the clear winner.

Updated on: Dec 13, 2011, 02:09:57 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Though environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan was hailed as a tough negotiator, the final Durban climate deal could at best be a mixed bag for India with European Union as the clear winner.

A reaction from Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) summed it up. Its former president Arun Bharat Ram expressed scepticism at an emission cut regime by 2020 but welcomed the second commitment period for Kyoto Protocol (2013-2017) and the Green Climate Fund to finance climate change actions of the developing world.

Natarajan till the last moment refused to binding emission cuts but agreed to avoid the tag of being a deal-breaker. The breakthrough came when the EU replaced the word 'binding' with 'forceable'.

The binding nature of the proposed treaty will be finalised by a new working group between 2012 and 2015, when the real climate battle will take place.

It will be interesting to watch how India plays its cards in the new working group considering its annual per capita emissions (of 1.7 tonnes) is even lower than some of the island nations such as Barbados, which sought binding emission commitments from India and China.

The rich nations are seeking comparable emission cuts by India and China, two big carbon emitters, but whether India will buckle again is the big question.

The next four years will see India fight to embed equity in the new treaty to be finalised by 2015. “The concept of equity has faded at the Durban conference,” said Sanjay Vashist of Climate Action Network, South Asia.

The conference decided to hold a workshop on equity in 2012 but did not find any reference in the pact on new climate treaty. 'Fight for equity is ahead," said Chandra Bhushan of Centre for Science and Environment.

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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