"There are few areas where that cooperation is needed more than on the issues of climate change and clean energy," said US President Bill Clinton, at his March 22 meeting with environmentalists in Agra. The speech, which promised funding for a series of energy projects in India, followed the signing of a joint statement on cooperation in energy and environment between Indian Minister of External Affairs, Jaswant Singh and US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright earlier that day.

The agreement, under which a joint consultative group on energy and environment will be set up, is the second of its kind in six months – in October 1999, Singh signed a similar statement on energy and environment with visiting US energy secretary Bill Richardson. This eagerness on part of the US to engage India in energy projects is not without cause. Under the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), the US has to show a reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions, mostly carbon dioxide, by 7 per cent compared to 1990 levels, by the 2008-2012 period.

Despite being the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG), the US is unwilling to make these reductions domestically. Instead, they want to make GHG reductions in developing countries under an emissions trading mechanism called the ‘clean development mechanism’ (CDM), which they would then show as their own reductions under the Kyoto Protocol. Pressure has been increasing on the Indian government because the modalities of CDM will be discussed at the sixth conference of parties in The Hague in November. The US claims that it will not be able to ratify the Kyoto Protocol unless India and the G77 accept CDM on US terms – which will bring down the cost of US emissions reduction by 95 per cent.

For instance, if a power plant costs 100 crores, the US will bear the incremental 2-10 crores that it takes India to buy a more efficient power plant from the US with lower GHG emissions. In this way, the US will ‘reduce’ emissions in developing countries, and show this as a reduction by the US under the Kyoto Protocol. Naturally, India will have to buy the clean energy technology from the US, making the arrangement even more lucrative for them.

But India has led the G77 in their opposition to CDM, pointing out that it is nothing but a mechanism for the North to mop up low cost emission reduction possibilities from developing countries. Moreover, it does not address the right of every individual to have equal rights to emit greenhouse gases, and to the Earth’s atmosphere. The GHG emissions of one US citizen with a more energy-intensive life style equalled those of 19 Indians in 1996.

According to an official from the Ministry of External Affairs speaking under conditions of anonymity, the pressure on India to accept CDM in recent months has been intense. Though Indian officials have succeeded in keeping both agreements general, without giving away any firm commitments for unqualified support to CDM, both signal an increasing and dangerous acceptance of the mechanism by India. According to the 1999 agreement signed by Singh and Richardson,

The governments of the United States and India resolve to work closely together with other countries to develop agreed international rules and procedures for the Kyoto Mechanisms, including the Clean Development Mechanism.

According to the more recent agreement,
The two countries intend to work together and with other countries in appropriate multilateral fora toward early agreement on the elements of the Kyoto mechanisms, including the Clean Development Mechanism…they recognise, in particular, that the Clean Development Mechanism could provide important opportunities for economic growth and environmental protection.

In his Agra speech, Clinton also said that countries "don’t have to choose between economic opportunity and environmental protection", implying that developing countries can take on commitments to reduce their GHG emissions without compromising their development. While this statement contradicts the US’ own position – where the Senate has refused to take on reductions because their fear it could affect economic growth – even environment-friendly countries like the Netherlands have accepted that economic growth and GHG emissions cannot be de-linked. Scientists in the Netherlands have shown that it can de-link sulphur dioxide emissions from Gross Domestic Product (GDP, i.e. national wealth), but they have not been able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions without reducing GDP (see graph). If industrialised countries are unable to achieve this goal, how can developing countries be expected to bear the weight of it?

• Industrialised countries also have a historical responsibility for the climate change problem, having set out on the path to development before poor countries. GHG emissions of one US citizen in 1996 were equal to those of 19 Indians, 107 Bangladeshis, 134 Bhutanese, 269 Nepalis, 30 Pakistanis and 49 Sri Lankans – as mirrored by their GDP.

• In December 1997, the Kyoto Protocol set the first targets for industrialised countries to reduce their emissions. According to the protocol, industrialised countries have to reduce their emission by 5.2 per cent compared to 1990 levels, by 2008-2012.

• Bound by a Senate resolution, the US has declared that it will not ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, under which industrialised countries have deadlines to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, unless key developing countries (like India, China and Brazil) show ‘meaningful participation’.

• So long as we continue to depend on fossil fuels in a big way, dealing with global warming amounts to rich and poor countries equitably sharing the atmosphere, one of the two most important global commons (the other being the oceans). All countries will have an equal opportunity at development only if the sharing is done in a fair manner.
• It is therefore important that India and other countries within the G77 withstand political pressure to sell their reduction options cheap today, without recognition of per capita entitlements.
• The entire Western world has refused to take on board developing country concerns about the equitable sharing of the atmosphere. Even Western civil society refuses to discuss these principles.

• Adverse effects of climate change will occur mostly in poor countries. For instance, South Asia is totally dependent on a highly sensitive and poorly studied climatic phenomenon, the monsoon. These changes could lead to socio-economic impacts and serious political destabilisation.

 For more information contact Anju Sharma at 6083394, 6081110, extn 243, or 6488393 after 6 p.m.