G. Srinivasan

Why developing countries must take a principled stand

Five emerging economies, including India, took part as Outreach Countries (O5) in the G-8 Summit, held in the placid resort of Heiligendamm, on Germany's Baltic coast, from June 6 to 8. The Summit may have been long on rhetoric and short on path-breaking results by way of a distinct shift in the mindset of the rich world and the developing countries in terms of reduction of greenhouse gases that are responsible for climatic aberrations.

The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, who attended the Summit, summed up the position neatly when he remarked: "If they reduce their emissions, we will also do so," indicating that this was two-way deal. In their own enlightened self-interest, the mitigation of climate change is undoubtedly the joint responsibility of both the developed and the developing world and the exclusion of the latter from any specified emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol presumably made the US abstain from signing the Protocol.

Now that negotiations are being initiated on the second commitment span of the Protocol, several leaders from other developed nations are putting pressure on at least the leading developing nations, such as China and India, to accept emission reduction commitments beyond 2012.

Interestingly, the G-8 Summit gave rise to the Heiligendamm Process, under which the industrial powers would hold constant policy dialogue with the O5 countries. The topics to be discussed include climate protection and energy efficiency, on the one hand, and the technology required to put these in place and the effective property rights for the technology, on the other. A permanent dialogue forum is being set up for the G-8 and O5 under the umbrella of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with the dialogue partners intending to achieve tangible results by 2009 on, for instance, protecting innovations, establishing fair investment conditions and working on climate protection technologies.

The emerging economies have been co-opted into this dialogue, despite their shrill call in a joint policy paper which highlighted the need for a pact on transfer of technology at affordable costs and emphasised that "rewards for innovators need to be balanced with common good for humankind".

Ravaging repercussions

If the `polluter-pays' principle remains by far the sane course to adopt, developed and developing countries can no longer afford to play petty politics by shifting the onus from one to the other by design or default since time is running out, with ravaging repercussions for the climate.

In a recent communication to the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India and Chairman of the Expert Committee on Impact of Climate Change, Dr R. Chidambaram, the Minister of State for Commerce, Mr Jairam Ramesh, candidly stated that "we have been pre-occupied with defending our position in relation to the Kyoto Protocol on the strength of our per capita greenhouse gas emissions. Anything per capita in India is low, and the question we ought to be asking ourselves is: Is climate change an issue for us or not, irrespective of what our contribution is globally."

Giving a personal account of his visit to Haryana Agricultural University, Hissar, where the Vice-Chancellor, Dr J. C. Katyal, gave a presentation on wheat yields in Haryana, which had been stagnating for past few years, Mr Ramesh said that "one of the reasons for this stagnation is that the maximum temperature in the crucial months of February and March has gone up by 2 degrees Centigrade and that our wheat varieties are simply not suited to such temperature variations".

Mr Ramesh said this convinced him that we should take climate change more seriously than we have done so far.

Energy-efficiency

In a country where lakhs of farmers depend on agriculture for livelihood, the aberrations in climate would have disastrous consequences if the authorities do not get serious about reductions in noxious emissions that affect the climate.

As the Director-General, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr R. K. Pachauri, aptly says, even while working in concert with other developing countries for consistent and principled stands to require the developed world to take adequate mitigation measures, India and other developing countries should adopt "no-regret measures", such as improving energy efficiency, greater use of renewable energy and structural shifts towards public transport, and more energy-efficient housing. Alongside, the country's planners and technocrats should foster a robust technology programme for efficient use of fossil fuels, in particular, and energy, in general.

Perhaps the time has come for India to take such steps seriously so that, regardless of its stand in the comity of nations, it would be committed to the mitigation of aberrant weather-related problems to which a country of continental size such as ours is increasingly prone, often with detrimental consequences in terms of growth and welfare.

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