UN Climate Change Negotiations 2012: India, China demand greater accountability from industrialised countries

DOHA: As representatives of nearly 200 countries began work on delivering a global consensus on tackling climate issues, India and China demanded greater accountability from the industrialised countries on their emission reduction targets, providing finance and technology to the developing countries. The advanced developing countries demand that it was time for the industrialised countries to do their “fair share” to deal with climate change.

There has been a consistent demand that countries like India and China take on a greater responsibility in reducing emission. At the opening sessions of the conference the advanced developing countries or BASIC made it clear that over the last four years the developing world has made more effort in reducing emissions than the industrialised countries.

Speaking on behalf of the BASIC countries, China stressed that the increased efforts to limit emissions has been undertaken even as poverty eradication and sustainable development remain the overriding priorities for developing countries. “We are already taking ambitious actions to reduce emissions, and as affirmed by many academic reports of reputed international organizations, our mitigation contribution is much greater than that by developed country Parties who have greater historical responsibilities and should take the lead in combating climate change,” said China in its opening address on behalf of the four advanced developing countries—India, Brazil, South Africa and China.

It is not just higher emission reduction that the developing countries are demanding from the industrialised world. Another key demand is funding and technology to help developing countries move to a low carbon, climate friendly trajectory of economic development. This is one area that India can make a proactive and meaningful intervention by providing the framework of an accountability framework to report, measure, review and verify the assistance provided by developed countries.

The advanced developing countries also stressed on the importance of meeting the target agreed to by industrialised countries at Copenhagen in 2009 of providing $100 billion per year by 2020. To this end, they called for a roadmap to scale up financial resources in order to avoid the funding gap for the period from 2013 to 2020.