Durban renewal

After days of discussion and disagreement at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban, in a final spurt of energy, the conference of parties managed to make some tangible progress. The Durban meet was about laying the bedrock principles for future negotiations, rather than detailed plans of who will cut emissions and by how much. The 190 nations at the meet agreed to “develop a new protocol, another legal instrument or agreed outcome with legal force”. The details are to be finalised by 2015, and all countries would have to start action by 2020. The Kyoto Protocol, which was to expire in 2012, was extended by another five years. A green climate fund will be set up for mitigation measures — though finance will be a clear challenge, given the global recession.

India has been wary of a legally binding agreement, fearing that it would effectively cramp growth. It has argued there is a need to differentiate between past polluters (the Annex 1 industrialised nations of the Kyoto Protocol) and economies on a path of dramatic growth, which need to pull hundreds of millions of people out of the poverty trap, and that they would thus require incentives to veer from a carbon-heavy path. However, that “historical responsibility” argument competes with other considerations, namely, the urgent need to shield the most vulnerable small nations from the worst impacts of climate change, which require a concerted effort to stop temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. The impasse between the India-China-Brazil bloc and the US, which demands symmetrical obligations from them, has been excruciating — and Durban managed to extract some slender commonground. The EU aligned itself with the Alliance of Small Island States, exerting greater pressure on nations like India and China. Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan scored by inserting the word “equity” into the long-term cooperation agreement, and holding out for a less constraining set of words.

The modified terms, seeking an outcome with “legal force”, allow India greater latitude to design its own response even if it acknowledges the way ahead will involve concrete cuts. Though the specifics will have to be worked out in the near future, at least the Durban deal shines a light on the road ahead for India, which can then encourage technological and business innovation.