Copenhagen Accord won't be a consensus decision
Nitin Sethi | The Times of India | 8 January 2010
NEW DELHI: The Copenhagen Accord will not become an official consensus decision under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change with Cuba formally rejecting it. The formal submission by Cuba to the UN opposing the controversial accord, comes after four countries -- Venezuela, Bolvia, Cuba and Sudan -- had opposed it during the recently concluded climate meet.
Within India, the risk and consequences of the government listing its domestic action to reduce emission intensity under the accord has now become a controversial issue.
With confusion still prevailing on the legal status as well as implications of signing on to the Copenhagen Accord, the hosts of the recently concluded acrimonious climate talks, Denmark, have asked countries to indicate their approval of the accord by January-end. India is expected to reflect its professed domestic and voluntary mitigation actions -- the target of reducing emission intensity by 20-25% by 2020 that UPA had earlier announced -- in the Copenhagen Accord.
The accord, for the first time in the history of climate negotiations, requires developing countries to list their domestic actions for mitigation in an international document.
With the UN climate convention secretariat claiming that it is still `conducting a legal analysis of the matter', the vote is still out on how the `internationalising' of the domestic targets would impact the negotiations on the two formal tracks -- the developed world targets under Kyoto Protocol and a long-term agreement -- that are to be held on 2010.
While the UPA has admitted that the Copenhagen Accord leaves the window open for the Kyoto Protocol to be buried in future, it has claimed to be committed to ensuring that the developed countries that are party to it provide ambitious targets to reduce emissions in its second phase that starts in 2013.
But observers, government officials and experts are vary that India and other developing countries listing their domestic targets in the controversial accord that they accepted after immense haggling with the US, could undermine the official negotiations.
The government is yet to clarify if it would only internationalise the macro target of 20-25% emission intensity reduction target on the Copenhagen Accord or give sector-wise breakdowns of its actions.
The government had already come in for flak for announcing a macro target, under international pressure, without having done its homework on how it would be achieved. The Planning Commission is now expected to set up an expert group to do a reverse engineering process to determine which industrial sector would have to bear the costs of the emission intensity reductions.
But worries within the government remain about the implications of then putting the broken down targets under the accord. Even though the accord is not a legally binding document, international policy experts have pointed out that an agreement signed by the most influential 20-odd countries across the world would by default weigh heavy on the governments that decide to associate themselves with it.
At the moment, only Australia, Canada, Papua New Guinea and the Maldives have decided so. While the two industrialized countries are seen as close allies of the US at the climate talks, Maldives, part of the G77 grouping otherwise, was seen in Copenhagen to break ranks with developing countries and demand actions to reduce emissions from the emerging large economies such as India and China.
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