India’s position underscoring the historical responsibilities of developing countries in the context of climate change was up against proposed dilutions to that concept notably by the US and the European Union at the recent climate talks in Geneva.
An Indian official said the meeting did not have any high ambition on targets though all countries took an active part in including various points in the draft treaty for Paris. The US suggested doing away with the differences between developed and developing countries and one of the suggestions was that countries should be rated based on World Bank data.
Finance, the hitch
Developing countries have been demanding finance to deal with climate change from industrialised countries which has been a bone of contention for some time. The Green Climate Fund has only crossed $10 billion.
There is a need for consensus on cutting emissions by all countries and the idea of “evolving” responsibilities is being pushed by developed countries, according to official sources. The US and others have been maintaining that all countries should aim at cutting emissions and not just the developed world.
At a recent interaction, the EU said Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) cannot be looked upon as the single principle to produce solutions. “We need to have a dynamic understanding of differentiated responsibilities and we are talking of an issue area where we discuss dynamics that are relevant over decades and decades,” said Ambassador João Cravinho, Head of Delegation of the European Union to India.
However, he clarified that CBDR was the cornerstone of international dialogue on climate change and the EU fully supported the notion. The EU joined the rest of the developed countries which are against going strictly by the principle of CBDR and in the recent climate talks in Geneva, the U.S. proposed a bifurcation approach which did not make a difference between developed and developing countries.
To keep talking of CBDR in the current context or in the years ahead in the same way would be a mistake, he felt, as the world economy would have changed so much. He called for a process that looked forward as the world could not rely forever on historical responsibility as a magic wand to address problems.
He said developing countries like China were now the largest emitters in the world and the question of differentiated responsibility should be relativised.
