Environment

Negotiating Climate Change for the Poor - Part I

Yale Global is carrying an article by Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, who led India’s negotiations at the UNFCCC, on how climate change affects the poor, and how a global policy to combat climate change can be agreed upon:

Yet, affluent countries press the poor to accept a very different approach. They urge the developing countries to strike a “balance” between development and climate-change mitigation. Their argument is that the industrialized countries are unable, or unwilling, to reduce their own greenhouse-gas emissions on the scale required for limiting climate change within a certain range. Therefore, according to this line of reasoning, developing countries should curb their rising greenhouse-gas emissions, even at the cost of slowing down development.

The proposal fails to meet the tests of efficiency as well as equity. By slowing development, the proposal would undermine the efforts of poorer countries to build up a capacity to adapt to climate change. It would increase the vulnerability of developing countries to the impacts of climate change. It is thus a deeply flawed response to climate change. 

Any future agreement on climate change must fully conform to the framework convention, which correctly reflects the relationship between climate change and sustainable development.

Ambassador Dasgupta, in spite of his substantive insights on climate change policy negotiation, has mistaken ethics for politics. Any future agreement on climate change must confirm - not to the framework convention - but to what rich and poor countries agree to give and take. Mr. Dasgupta repeats the standard Indian line of “common but differentiated responsibility”, but the sad irony is that standing on a pedestal and reading the principles of the UNFCCC will neither solve the problem (of climate change) that threatens the poor, nor offer the poor any say in a solution that eventually develops.

Indeed, this should now be abundantly clear to everyone in view of the climate change meeting hosted by the US this week. The Bush administration is asking all participants to provide information on their internal mitigation targets. Further, the US Congress is contemplating - and will eventually impose - penalties on countries that do not mitigate emissions.

With the US willing to wield the stick the time for the poor to try and shape any future agreement may already be past. This is reminiscent of the creation of the WTO and TRIPS agreements which were forced down the throats of poor countries. It suggests India would do well to move quickly to preempt such moves by the US through aggressive engagement with Australia, Japan, China, and the EU - in order to ensure its own needs (of adaptation and compensation) are incorporated in any framework. But one can be certain that discussing ethics, equity, and efficiency will not win the day.

© 2007 The Discomfort Zone.