Bid to subvert Kyoto Protocol

S. Faizi
The Statesman, 29 August

The climate conference recently announced by President George W Bush is, obviously, another attempt by the US government to subvert the Kyoto Protocol and to undermine the legitimate multilateral processes to address the calamitous climate change.

In spite of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s infatuation with the US administration and that country having an extra full scale envoy to India in Washington at the cost of Indian tax payers, it would do well for the global environment and the people of India if the country stayed away from this mischievous meeting.

The global community is engaged in addressing the escalating climate change crisis through the multilateral treaty on climate change (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCC) and in particular its Kyoto Protocol that came into force in 2005. The US vehemently refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol that sets mandatory emission reduction targets for the industrialized countries. As for the UNFCCC, while the treaty asks to voluntarily reduce the emission level to that of 1990 by the year 2000, the US emission level in 2000 was actually 14 per cent more than in 1990. Intolerant of the Kyoto Protocol and the democratic multilateral mechanisms in place, the US is making a strategic attempt to belittle and delegitimise these mechanisms by unilaterally deciding to hold the meeting of what it describes as “major economies” on energy security and climate change.

The Conference of Parties to UNFCCC is set to discuss measures to be adopted beyond the 2012 period of the Kyoto Protocol, in December this year in Bali, and there are multiple multilateral meetings held as a run up to this event. One important event to galvanise support for agreement on meaningful carbon reduction initiatives beyond Kyoto Protocol is the meeting of the heads of governments on 24 September called by the UN Secretary General. The Bush meeting to be held on 27-28 September is to undercut these multilateral events in his determination not to compromise on the enormous carbon emissions in the country.

It is universally agreed that addressing the climate change is a common but differentiated responsibility of all countries. The differentiated responsibility is due to the high level of historical and contemporary pollution caused by the developed countries. It is for this reason that the climate treaty broadly divides countries into Annex I and non-Annex I, developed and developing countries respectively. One of the arguments for the US refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol has been the exclusion of countries like India and China from mandatory reductions, while in actual fact the per capita emissions in these countries are only a fraction of America’s. The concept of “major economies” is alien to the climate treaties, and this the US is introducing to remove the exemption of developing countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and Mexico, in addition to India and China. The guest list includes these countries as well as the Annex I countries. The developing countries should refuse to fall into this trap by keeping away from the Bush meeting.

The US, the climate culprit who has landed us in the climate mess must first ratify and implement the Kyoto Protocol before it seeks the world to discuss climate change solutions. And this they vehemently refuses to do, as they refuse to ratify the Biodiversity Convention and its Biosafety Protocol. As the US administration is steered by lobbyists of interests groups and the concerns of the military-industrial complex, as everybody knows, and as recently bared by Newsweek- normally an instrument of American foreign policy - in the case of climate change refusal, the US attempt is only meant to introduce sophisticated new impediments in reducing the use of fossil fuels. The desperation of this patriotic American weekly only shows the worrying extent to which the climate belligerence of US has grown, despite appeals by a large segment of the population, eminent climate scientists, some individual states and even a section of the industry (We can perhaps forgive this weekly now for alerting us to an impending spectre of ‘global cooling’ in a 1975 issue). Even the Hollywood that sells the world the most unsustainable form of life style has joined the climate chorus. And now the US wants to put the rest of the world, the developing countries on the guest list in particular, on a reactive gear, and that is what they are aiming through the conference.

The US meeting is to divert attention from the US refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol as well as to spoil the ongoing multilateral efforts. This is also contrary to the G-8 June 2007 Summit decision to “actively and constructively participate in the UN Climate Change Conference in December in Indonesia with a view to achieving a post-2012 agreement…”. It may be recalled that Bush had insisted at this meeting on incorporating India and China in the successor agreement to Kyoto Protocol.

While refusing to accept mandatory reduction targets India should embark on its own domestic programs to reduce the increasing pollution from fossil fuel use. The reckless expansion of the automobile and aviation industry in particular should be brought under environmental checks. On the other hand, India should reform itself to find genuine justification for not submitting to mandatory reductions. The argument that India’s development space should be expanded to remove poverty in the country is a travesty of the ground truth. The beneficiaries of India’s pollution estate, mirroring the global equation, is the elite minority, while the poor pay the cost as victims of floods, droughts, diseases and other forms of disasters. It is only fitting that India’s carbon exemption is linked to the achievement of the millennium development goals and beyond in the country. And since such a linkage will not come about voluntarily, given the structurally exclusionary nature of the country’s economic system, pressure from the international civil society on this count would be welcome.

Participation in the US conference would amount to denying the spirit of the Kyoto Protocol and complicity in undermining the democratic multilateral forums and processes, and therefore India and other developing countries should stay away from the conference and instead work towards consensus on mandatory enhanced emission reduction targets for all industrial economies to be adopted in the post-Kyoto Protocol period, making use of the meetings of the Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC. The US should be told that they cannot continue to undermine the multilateral forums. And they should be told to adopt immediate measures to reduce carbon emissions and pay reparations to the least developed countries and island states for causing the climate catastrophe, if necessary with the aid of selective economic boycott.

(The author is an ecologist specialising in international environmental policy)