EU backs US bid to corner India at climate talks

NEW DELHI: Differences between the rich and the developing countries have turned into entrenched battle lines at the ongoing climate negotiations in Bangkok, with the EU backing the contentious proposal of the US to do away with the Kyoto Protocol -- the compact that binds industrialized nations to emission reduction targets under the UN convention.

While the US, which has not signed the Kyoto Protocol, has always suggested its demise as the only way forward, the EU had so far not displayed such an inclination.

The coming together of industrialized countries over the past two days in the Thai capital signals a renewed and vigorous attempt to get emerging economies, including India, to take on a set of internationally binding emission reduction targets without financial or technical compensation to cover for the economic costs of achieving them.
India is leading the charge along with other key developing countries against the move at the ongoing negotiations at Bangkok.

The convention at present demands commitments only from industrialized countries to reduce their historically disproportionate emission levels. The protocol turns these commitments into hard targets to be achieved in fixed time.

While India and other developing countries have demanded for last two years that the negotiations, as agreed upon under the Bali Action Plan in 2007, only look to enhance the commitments under Kyoto Protocol and the mother convention, industrialized nations made it clear in Bangkok that they wanted to alter the convention and the protocol in order to corner India and other large developing countries into taking commitments.

The US wants another omnibus agreement or protocol which locks India, China, Brazil and South Africa into taking emission control targets. EU too has wanted action from the four to be brought under international scanner but had so far not shown too keen an interest in altering the existing protocol's basic structure which is under review for second phase of commitment levels.

But at the Bangkok meet, EU made a tactical shift and said it would prefer a new single "instrument" which binds countries from both sides of the spectrum -- the industrialised and the developing -- into a single regime. Interestingly, it also wants pieces of the earlier protocol that are to its advantage to be chopped into the new deal.

India and others pointed out at the meet that the existing convention and the understanding achieved by all countries at Bali in 2007 differentiates between "commitments" of the rich countries and the "actions" of the rest. They also pointed out that the actions of the developing countries, as per existing convention and decisions, is to be undertaken only when enabled by finances and technology transfer from the industrialized countries.

A single regime as proposed by EU and US will break the equity-based differences enshrined in the convention and force the larger developing countries with much lower per capita emissions to be treated at par with the countries responsible for the historical responsibility of GHG emissions.