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India to change climate stance, allow international scrutiny |
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/India-to-change-climate-stance-allow-international-scrutiny/articleshow/7031765.cms
NEW DELHI: Environment minister Jairam Ramesh looks set to make a bold deviation from the country's formal stance on climate change talks to suggest that developing countries should agree upfront to a detailed plan for international scrutiny of their mitigation actions without waiting for developed countries to reveal their hand.
While the developing countries have, as part of the grand bargain at Copenhagen talks, accepted the idea of international scrutiny, they want to delay its operationalization till the developed countries have revealed how far they are willing to go to accept emission targets for themselves and to fulfil their promise to give $90 billion immediately and $100 billion every year starting 2020 for a global effort.
Ramesh, on his way to Cancun to join leaders from around the world to break the logjam in climate change negotiations, is likely to suggest that developing countries should revisit their strategy.
It is a gamble. Developing countries, especially the emerging economies grouped as BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) have so far been staunchly opposed to the idea. A failure carries the risk of India becoming a suspect in the camp. Domestically, climate change talks have been a sensitive issue, with a strong risk of attempts at flexibility getting dubbed as sellout.
Conversely, the idea has the potential of pitchforking India into the role of bridgemaker.
It could also move India closer to the developed world, especially the US, which has demanded that key developing economies elaborate how they shall get 'international consultation and analysis (ICA)' done of their mitigation actions, whether funded internationally or domestically.
As of now, Ramesh faces heavy odds, with developing countries firm that they should wait to see whether developed countries keep their part of the Copenhagen bargain. The failure of developed countries to provide $30 billion annually to the poorest countries starting 2010 has only validated their tough stance. China, Brazil and South Africa have told India not to be proactive.
BASIC as well as G77 are likely to go into a huddle on this in Cancun in the coming days.
Ramesh has differed from the approach since April 2010 when he, at the request of US climate change envoy Todd Stern, took the first step towards giving details upfront on "international consultation" and to the US-backed Major Economies Forum.
The other BASIC countries did not like the move at the point. Undeterred, Ramesh elaborated his independent position further, stating that countries -- rich or poor -- currently emitting more than 1% of global emissions should come under a similar international scrutiny regime.
If Ramesh is able to sell the proposal, then India, China, South Africa and Brazil would get clubbed with historical emitters such as US, UK, Germany, Japan, Australia and Russia -- a beginning of the breach in the firewall that UN convention has had between developing countries and the rich countries responsible for majority of emissions in the atmosphere.
While Ramesh had put this up at the last MEF meeting in Washington and at the meeting Mexico hosted before the big jamboree, he had at that point clearly said that this was not the official Indian position, but just an informal proposal from his side. At Cancun, Ramesh could now push to make this India's official stance.
To do so, the Indian team would have to put this as a formal submission to the UN negotiations. While in the Copenhagen Accord, the ICA provisions exist, India and other developing countries have so far resisted the push to get them embedded in the actual UN negotiations text -- which would become the final template for a global deal.
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