Time to call a spade a spade

Recognising realities Will help reconcile with the ecosystem JURGEN ZIEWE/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

Climate talks have drifted away from the principle of equity and differentiated responsibility. India must bring it back on track

The Twenty First Conference of Parties (COP 21) in Paris, later in the year, beckons the usual climate-negotiation junkies for their annual fix for the 21st year in a row.

Editorials by reputable armchair experts intellectualising global inaction are obfuscating inconvenient truths. Feel-good reports from reputed institutions are once again promising the wonders of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and costless win-win paths to remaining below the now mythical 2 degrees C warming bound. A reality check is in order, despite the 2014 global slowdown in the rate of growth of fossil fuel consumption.

Grim and smoky truths

Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have continued to rise since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Annual carbon dioxide emissions today are 70 per cent above the 1992 level. The current concentration level of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere was last experienced over a million years ago. The current GHG emissions trajectory exceeds the worst scenarios assessed by IPCC’s fifth assessment report. There is a broad scientific consensus that the current global GHG emissions trajectory is in line with a 4.5 degrees C to 6 degrees C rise in global temperature by 2100 with devastating consequences for our planet.

Climate variability, extreme weather events, heat waves, droughts and flooding have increasingly become frequent and severe. Vulnerable human populations and other species are already suffering the consequences of global warming. The Living Planet Index, a measure of ecological well-being developed by WWF, shows an improvement of 7 per cent for the rich nations between 1970 and 2008 and a fall of 31-60 per cent for the relatively poor countries over the same period.

Under the business as usual scenario we would, by 2030, need another planet like earth to meet our ever growing demand for the natural capital and eco-services planet earth provides. Anthropogenic warming could abruptly trigger catastrophic climate events that result in unprecedented loss of human and other species.

Who’s to blame?

The OECD with a combined population equal to that of India continues to account for 37 per cent of production-based global GHG emissions. The GHG emissions of OECD based on consumption of goods and services could be significantly higher. If one includes the world’s biggest polluter, China, that accounts for almost a quarter of the global GHG emissions, then well over 65 per cent of the global GHG emissions could be attributed to OECD and China. As a comparison, the bottom 50 per cent of the world — and India accounts for 35 per cent of this bottom half — has a combined share of around 17 per cent in global GHG emissions, including India’s share of about 6 per cent.

Global negotiations have been reduced to a total farce. The duly ratified framework convention on climate change demanding climate action by the signatory nations based on the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” has essentially been abandoned.

Instead, the Paris talks seek “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs), from each signatory, towards climate actions without any specific global benchmark on what is adequate or needed for averting climate-change induced genocide of human and other species.

All notions of “historical responsibility” for climate change and “equity” enshrined in the framework convention have been progressively diluted over the 21 years of negotiations; how INDCs will address these elements is up in the air. Further, how INDCs will address promises of climate finance, technology transfer and capacity building contained in the 2007 Bali Action Plan remains unclear.

Most importantly, there is no clarity on how INDCs will account for climate actions towards raising adaptive capacity of the vulnerable. Even an acceptable definition of vulnerability has eluded the efforts of the last 21 years.

What India must do

Lack of clarity and consistency in India’s negotiating stance and the penchant of its negotiators to sit at the high table with the world’s worst polluters have landed India in a peculiar mess. India with less than 6 per cent of the global GHG emissions and less than 5 per cent of global primary energy consumption is seen as the major stumbling block to a global deal. The OECD and China together consume 66 per cent of the world’s primary energy supply. At Paris, India must unequivocally state that consumption of goods and services causes emissions. Stopping unsustainable, and still growing, consumption of our planet’s limited natural capital and paying for past excesses are the only adequate and equitable INDCs that India must demand from the OECD. India must categorically differentiate itself from China, an economy almost five times larger and much higher emissions in both absolute and per capita terms.

Finally, India must not shy away from the name-and-shame game that will be played at Paris. It should list nations with per capita emissions at or above European levels that are still hiding behind the Non-Annex I label.

India must stand up and lead the bottom half of the world. This part of the world has little historical responsibility for emissions and continues to live and grow far more sustainably in relative terms compared to the top 20 per cent and the middle 30 per cent of the world. India’s INDCs must be driven by the fact that of the 2.5 billion humans vulnerable to global warming worldwide, the largest number (exceeding 850 million) live in India. No country shall suffer more from climate change than India.

Hence, India’s simple INDC should be rapid development in order to deliver a threshold level of adaptive capacity to the bottom 60-70 per cent of her population.

Climate change literature has long recognised that a threshold level of development is the best form of adaptation.

India’s INDCs must also emphasise the financial, technological and capacity building support it needs to make this growth trajectory more sustainable. If India’s INDCs fail to ensure access to the required carbon space and primary energy to deliver such adaptive capacity, then it would be as culpable to the charge of climate change-induced genocide of human and other species of our ecosystem as the real perpetrators. India’s policymakers, her negotiators and her intellectuals should call a spade a spade at Paris to escape this blame.

The writer is former principal adviser, power & energy, Government of India

(This article was published on July 3, 2015)