Big win for India at Durban climate meet

In what is perceived as a moral victory, a new negotiating draft for conference of 195 countries at the port city on Wednesday had India's concerns on equity and unilateral carbon tax. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Dec 8, 2011, 02:13:23 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Durban

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In what is perceived as a moral victory, a new negotiating draft for conference of 195 countries at the port city on Wednesday had India's concerns on equity and unilateral carbon tax. But, it fails to find mention of intellectual property right issues related to transfer of clean technologies.

India had faced a stumbling block from some rich nations represented by Singapore in getting its concerns on these three issues discussed at the Durban conference. After much peristance and support from developing world countries such as Pakistan, the conference decided not sidetrack the issues.

The 137 page amalgamation draft of working group on long term action on climate change, also called LCA track, details about importance of equity with relation to "historical responsibility" of the rich nations to reduce emissions and providing finance and technology to the developing world to keep their emissions under check.

The shared vision of the draft also puts the onus of reducing emissions on rich nations, an issue flagged by environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan. "According to preamble of the (UN climate) convention, social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of the developing world," the draft read.

"It is just the first step," said an Indian negotiator. "We want the issues to be discussed in a subsidary body so that they cannot be thrown out".

The Basic quartlet of India, China, South Africa and Brazil, has backed India on these issues in the working group meetings saying that these issues were left out of the Cancun Agreements in 2010.

The consenus, however, eludes on the new LCA draft and the ministers are expected to cut down differences to reach conclusion by Friday night.

Srinivas Krishnasway of Climate Action Network South Asia urged India and other Basic countries to work towards achieving an agreement on the LCA track by 2015 and appreciated their climate mitigation actions.

South African president Jacob Zuma has already said that the countries should aim for a climate treaty in 2015 when review of pledges of rich nations, climate action by the developing countries and fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel Report on Climate is available.

In addition, India with its Basic partners want the 2015 review should include progress on Bali Road Map outlining differenciatated responsbility for rich and development countries and the individual pledges of the richer nations.

"The review will tell us that many rich nations have not met their pledges whereas developing was on a path to achieve their voluntary climate actions," the official said.

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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