ManagementShifting the goal-posts
Business Standard / New Delhi December 21, 2009, 0:38 IST
Two months ago, The Times of India reported that the environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, had suggested that India “junk the Kyoto Protocol, delink India from the G77… and take on greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments under a new deal without any counter-guarantee of finances and technology.” Mr Ramesh, the newspaper said, argued “for a deviation from the Kyoto Protocol under which only the developed countries — listed in Annexure 1 — are required to take obligations for emission cuts, saying that it would also help in a better alignment with the US.” It quoted the minister as saying, “We must welcome initiatives to bring the US into the mainstream, if need be through a special mechanism, without diluting basic Annex 1/non-Annex distinctions.”
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Viewed against that backdrop, the Copenhagen Accord hammered out late last week suggests that the prime minister accepted in broad terms the radical shift in India’s position that his environment minister had recommended in October. The Kyoto Protocol has not been “junked” but it has certainly been diluted in substantial measure, and may be well on the way to being junked at the next annual environment talkathon, in Mexico City. Plus, in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit of 193 countries, India took on what it called unilateral emission cuts, has now agreed to international supervision of these cuts (once called a red line by Mr Ramesh), left many G77 members deeply unhappy, brought the US into the tent so to speak, and got no guarantees of help with finances and technology. Every element of the Ramesh package is there.
After you cut through all the verbiage and spin, that is the primary fact. Whether you approve or not depends fundamentally on whether any better outcome was possible, and whether you think complete failure at Copenhagen was preferable to the temporary fudge that paves the way for further arm-wrestling. Since there are counter-factuals involved in such arguments, one opinion is as good as another. An instructive method is to see in whose direction the goal-posts have been moved, and it would seem to be beyond dispute that India has yielded more ground than the US.
The second fact is that, in an age where global problems require global solutions, it is the outliers that have determined the agenda for action. The more “cooperative” players in the middle (like the European nations) become bystanders along with those who are powerless, like the African nations and the Vanuatus of the world. What can be done or not done is determined by those who adopt extreme positions — like the US, and (in American eyes at least) China. This augurs poorly for future world cooperation; it will encourage countries to go for hard positions. Watch this space when it comes to the trade talks under the troubled Doha Round.
The third point worth noting is that India has indeed divorced itself from the G77 when it matters, and is much more a G20 country and recognised as such. This reflects the emerging reality. But what about the divisions within the G20? India is much less a sinner than China when it comes to global emissions — in absolute terms, in per capita terms and in relation to GDP. Could India have separated itself from China at Copenhagen, and adopted the more strategic argument that it will focus on emissions per unit of GDP — which no one can question in principle, and on which India comes up trumps? There is still time to give up the Chindia pretence, that the two countries’ interests are aligned.