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Shades of Grey: Climate change agreement: Victory or defeat for India?

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Now that the dust has settled and amid the fog and pollution of India’s national Capital, it would be timely to stringently analyze the Paris Agreement and whether it safeguards our national interests adequately or not? Is it a deal changer or not? Given the complexity of the text, finalized after 4 years of prolonged negotiations and many sleepless nights in Paris, there are no easy answers. The issues, however, need to be addressed urgently.

2. Did India lose out? The Kyoto Protocol, the existing international arrangement on climate change, which the Paris Agreement will replace in 2020, was based on the twin principles of CBDR (common but differentiated responsibility) and ‘historical responsibilities’ and had assigned specific emission reduction targets for Annex-I countries. Kyoto had distinguished between those who had “historical responsibility” and those who did not.

The first were put in Annex-I of the UNFCCC document, while the others came to be known as non-Annex countries. This is because of international recognition that developed countries had a “historical responsibility” for global warming and a greater responsibility to take steps to mitigate the impact. The CBDR was also India’s safeguard to ensure that our future energy options were secure; otherwise India would have been unduly pressured to prematurely limit its emissions. India’s negotiators in Paris were determined that this principle could not be diluted since India would require much more energy in the coming decades as it simultaneously develops its renewable energy options.

3. The reality was that our negotiators had to demonstrate greater flexibility and accept the specific application of the principles of CBDR in key areas, instead of an overall invocation of this principle. They also had to accept, in the absence of support from other developing countries, reference to the principles of “historical responsibilities”. For this reason, Paris does not have a single mention of ‘historical responsibility’ nor to Annex-I and non-Annex countries, though it does emphasise the principle of CBDR at several places. This was trumpeted as a victory by developed countries who wished to delete this fundamental principle, key to the Kyoto Protocol and so important for India. There is no doubt that the absence of references to ‘Annex-I’ and ‘non-Annex’ is unfortunate, since it implies that developed and developing countries would require in future a new definition which may be virtually impossible to negotiate, though these terms will have to be defined by 2020.

4. The gains from our perspective are much more nuanced. There is a useful specification, reportedly insisted upon by India’s negotiators, on how the developed/developing country distinction would be interpreted in the crucial areas of mitigation. As an example, the Agreement insists that developed countries should take the lead in economy wide emission reduction targets while “developing countries should aspire to do so over time”, thus acknowledging that developing countries could only reduce their emissions at a later period.

There is also an important distinction maintained between the two categories in the provision of climate finance, based on recognition of the principle that mitigation action by developing countries would need support from developed countries. On the other hand and unlike the Kyoto Protocol, emission reduction obligations of developed countries are not legally binding but are entirely voluntary. The provision for financial support to developing countries is not clearly distinguished from normal capital flows. This would naturally weaken, over a period of time, the original UNFCC provisions on financing mitigation costs of developing countries. Further and regrettably, legal obligations have been greatly diluted in Paris. The Paris Agreement only introduces a “pledge and review” system, which is purely voluntary, with no penalties for not achieving these voluntary targets.

5. Those who support the Paris Agreement point out that attention should focus on the national pledges made, particularly by the developed countries before Paris and that the Agreement includes a mechanism to update and review these pledges which would then establish mandatory procedures, encouraging and stimulating state parties to shift to renewable energy options and low carbon trajectories. From an Indian perspective, this logic would appear to be over simplistic and naïve, given the ongoing euro zone crisis in Europe, the slow US recovery and the continuous efforts by developed countries on one hand to divert international focus on responsibility for global warming and on the other to shift mitigation costs to developing countries.

6. From a national perspective, India was able to ensure that UNFCC was not set aside or completely derailed. Its key provisions, though diluted, remain, as does the distinction between the developed and developing countries and the occasional references to CBDR. There is however, no room for complacency. Our negotiators must remain vigilant. Developed countries led by the US will no doubt resume their efforts to re-interpret the UNFCC during future negotiations. Henry Kissinger had famously said that while the Congress of Vienna in 1815 had brought peace to Europe for 100 years, the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 broke down in a short period because, unlike in Vienna, where all parties had been equally dissatisfied with the Agreement, at Versailles only one party, Germany, was so victimized that Germany had to break the Agreement whenever possible and sooner rather than later. From that angle, the Paris Agreement is more like Vienna rather than Versailles, since it does not fully satisfy or dissatisfy the different conflicting interests and at least ensures that the fundamental principles of UNFCC and the Kyoto Protocol are upheld for the present. From that perspective and while urging vigilance on our negotiators, I would add my vote in favor of the Paris Agreement.

(The author is a former Indian Ambassador and headed the Europe desk at the Indian Foreign Office)

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