India, China resist rich nations at Copenhagen meet

Leading the developing countries in rejecting a leaked Danish proposal seeking to tilt global climate change negotiations in favour of the rich countries, India and China signaled to the United Nations climate conference that no deal is better than a bad deal, reports Chetan Chauhan.See special

Updated on: Dec 10, 2009, 10:20:29 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Copenhagen

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Leading the developing countries in rejecting a leaked Danish proposal seeking to tilt global climate change negotiations in favour of the rich countries, India and China signaled to the United Nations climate conference that no deal is better than a bad deal.

The Danish proposal, which hasn’t been made public yet, undermined the principle that rich countries will undertake more responsibilities than the poorer ones and proposed to make the heads of state decide the final outcome of the conference on December 18.

The report was leaked to the media on Wednesday.

India and China responded jointly at what is perceived to have the support of all the rich countries, including the United States. G-77, a bloc of developing countries, overcame their internal differences on various issues to reject the Dutch move.

“We don’t want any surprises at the last moment,” said Shyam Sharan, the Prime Minister’s special envoy on climate change. “Consensus has to be reached before December 18. The head of states should adopt what negotiators decide.”

While insisting the principle of ‘differentiated responsibility’ (richer nations should do more) is non-negotiable, India and China have decided to push for a more substantive outcome.

They have agreed to negotiate basically three options before the heads of state meet on December 18 :

1. framework for a legally binding document, 2. a political statement, 3. mix of an agreement on issues of consensus and a political statement on contentious subjects, with an agreed deadline for a binding agreement.

A legally binding agreement looks difficult with the US declaring on Wednesday that it is opposed to another “Kyoto type” agreement.

“It has not worked well,” said US chief negotiator Tord Stern. “We need significant action by major developing countries for climate mitigation.”

The US also wants international verification of voluntary, self-financed, mitigation measures — unacceptable to India and China.

“The third option is the one most likely to be adopted,” said an Indian negotiator, who participated in a bilateral with China on Tuesday.

In this option, India and China are looking at an agreement on financing by the rich countries with a political statement on their willingness to cut carbon emissions by 2020.

These options are an outcome of the China-India move to oppose the Danish proposal.

India and China also decided to “improve upon” their proposal in response to an earlier Danish proposal.

The G-77 countries had demanded some changes in what came to be called the BASIC proposal, as it has been introduced by Brazil, South Africa, India and China.

“The BASIC proposal has put forth meaningful demand on behalf of the developing world and has helped oppose the Danish proposal,” said G-77 spokesperson Lumumba-Stantslaus Dl-Aping.

“We want some more detailing in the proposal, which is being discussed.”

The draft of the BASIC proposal was given to the G-77 countries on December 5.

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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