Doha climate talks: India's has edge over equity, CBDR

DOHA: Indian stood on the verge of winning the ground it had lost since 2009 as the principle of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities ( CBDR) comes back with a bang on the climate agenda. However, with the talks getting extended by at least a day beyond the official deadline of Friday, it remained too early to assess if the gathered 194 countries would commit enough to keep the world safe from dangerous levels of climate change or that the Indian delegation would eventually get all it came looking for in Qatar’s capital.

A series of back to back official meetings ran in parallel all day along with country blocks holding their closed door meetings, meetings by selected ministers to thrash out finer as well as contentious issues, bilateral between key players and improved draft versions of what the ministers may sign on to at the end kept appearing.

India’s own red-lines found respect as each improved text reflected the country’s non-negotiables. The principles of Equity and CBDR which had either been diluted or given a questionable character since India signed on the Copenhagen Accord in 2009 got a credible and embedded space in all climate talks for a future regime. But by the time of filing the news report, the negotiating text still remained open to trade-offs between country blocks till the last moment before they get adopted by consensus as a decision of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

One of the most critical concerns, especially to the smaller developing countries, the roadmap through which the developed countries would deliver the promised US $100 billion by 2020 remained wide opened with the rich countries continued to block any inscribed commitment on formal UN platforms on how they would ramp up the funds from now until 2020.

On Kyoto Protocol’s second phase starting 2013 the world seemed closer to a commitment though there too some critical loopholes — that would give the developed world an easy way out of cutting emissions — were yet to be closed. For the developing world concerns also remained on board about the rich countries linking their delivering on commitments made last year to future obligations of poor countries.

Rumours floated through the halls of the venue that the developed countries, at the last moment, could spring a surprise and force the countries to junk all the unresolved work from previous 5 years on issues closer to the interests of developing countries but observers warned that such a move was likely to turn Doha put the climate change talks in to deep freeze just as the venue had frozen to suspension the WTO talks.