Durban Debacle: What the Third World ought to do!

2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP17), Durban, South Africa. Source: UNclimatechange

The recently concluded UN Conference on Climate Change in Durban failed to produce a consensus. The conference attendees simply agreed to engage in more talks in order to arrive at some kind of legally binding instruments ensuring imposition of emission curbs in all countries by 2020.

The fact that it is already too late to prevent a two degree Celsius rise which is the maximum limit for human beings on Earth to tolerate is acknowledged.

The summit also witnessed the closing of not only the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 but also the idea of common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR).This responsibility is recognised as a most important principle on which the Kyoto Protocol, negotiated under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is based.

As usual as in the case of prior summits, this summit also witnessed the refusal of industrialised nations to accept their industries as a major source of pollution, therefore conceding their primary responsibility in resolving the global environmental crisis. Such well- conceived strategy devised by the European Union since the Copenhagen Summit in 2009, has now virtually succeeded in side- lining the issue of CBDR in any future instrument, all with the active support of the US.

Perhaps as an eye wash for Third World nations, the worst sufferers due to large scale pollution caused by the West’s industries, this summit declares for another legal instrument to be ready by 2015 and made operational by 2020.

A “protocol, another legal instrument or agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all” will be inconsequential to these underdeveloped or developing economies because it is devoid of the responsibilities determined by the CBDR doctrine.

Feeling the collective and united pressure of the Third World countries, the US and the EU have argued since 1997, when Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, that today the World cannot be divided into two halves- developed and developing.

Hence the developing economies like China and other large countries like Brazil, South Africa and also India must be made accountable to the legally binding emission norms. The EU and USA, together, managed to win the support of the Alliance of Small Island States, the Least Developed Countries (LCDs) and even South Africa and Brazil to its side while preparing for the final version of the final deal.

The US has all along been outside of Kyoto because it does not accept the CBDR.

Hence it extended a somewhat calculated support, the future of which will be determined by re-election of President Obama who has already disregarded his earlier “green” pledges.

Further, since Russia, Japan and now Canada are also pulling out, the Kyoto Protocol appears to be meaningless for all practical purposes even if the EU now concedes to honour it for another five years after 2012.

Against this backdrop, when the West is obnoxiously insistent on its stand in not cooperating with the developing nations and concentrating only on their own industrial and commercial interests, what are the options for them (Third World). In fact, these developing countries, including India, are the most affected lot due to global warming, as a result of rising greenhouse gas emissions. With the continuing rise in the climatic temperature, the polar ice will melt down causing sea levels to increase, thereby drowning islands and other surrounding habitations.

And glaciers will also melt resulting in the flooding of farmland and the displacement of populations in flood prone regions.

Further, below the surface water-levels and rivers may fall to dry up. Also, the seasonal rainfall patterns will be adversely affected, rendering fertile lands barren fields and deserts thus destroying agricultural business, the only option of survival for majority of people inhabiting the Third World.

As a result, there will be a large scale shifting of peoples into areas with a better climate, particularly cooler areas, with better potable water, soil and food.

Social amenities will degrade too, leading to eruption of unhygienic conditions and the emergence of diseases and epidemics causing massive deaths of humans and animals.

Also, social security and law & order may collapse leading to popular uprisings or civil rebellion. Such conditions will be very disastrous for developing countries like India, Brazil and South Africa who are better off than their undeveloped neighbours, whose populations might migrate into developing nations seeking sanctuary.

The Third World cannot expect the required cooperation from the West.

The West has no urgent imperatives because they are the least affected by global warming because they inhabit cool, temperate zones with a good supply of water.

Furthermore, they are richer and technologically advanced, so they can adjust to the changing climate more readily.

An option is to make services, consumer items and energy sources too costly to afford so that there will be less consumption and consequent less pollution. But, the rich will remain mostly untouched by such price hikes so consumption will not be deterred.

Another choice is to search for new forms of energy which would be cheaper, more available and usable everywhere. This may include a technological trick known as “geo-engineering”, that provides for fiddling with the planetary bio-sphere to cause carbon to degrade and temperatures to fall.

But, this is still a very young science which cannot assure an effective solution.

As a last option, “adaption” may come to rescue which holds that emission reductions are too little too late and, therefore, the only option is to create such material and social systems that may reduce the pain. This option could force the world to search for some viable political, scientific & technological solutions that will reverse global warming.

What is urgently required is that the developing countries, particularly India, as a founding father of the NAM, should unite to play a more responsible and proactive role and not just a reactive one as was seen in Durban. The small islands nations and the least developed countries should be India’s natural allies in any future negotiations.

India should not support the position that poor nations must cut their emission levels while the rich derive the maximum benefits as through the purchasing of carbon credits from the poor.

But India in association with other likeminded countries must act for the best but, at the same time, remain prepared for the worst.

Besides these, developing nations ought to devise other means in which to exercise an effective restraint upon the developed nations. This may become binding in a progressive manner because such measures very much require consensus building.

However, South-South cooperation, already much talked about in the NAM, UN and in other global fora, will be a positive step because it will strengthen their unity and consolidate their position vis-à-vis the developed countries.

A new global legal institution, a supranational one, for monitoring environmental pollution by countries might be necessary but would ultimately be difficult to see to fruition.

This institution must be provided with an independent budget and be made accountable to the UN General Assembly, and not the Security Council. Indeed, all these steps require scholarly debate the world over.