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93 nations sign compromise climate pact

11 December 2010 23:57 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. In the wee hours of Saturday morning at this Mexican seaside resort, representatives of 93 countries struck a compromise climate pact, called Cancun Agreement. The unexpected outcome was meant to please the world, show trust had been re-built between rich and developed countries, but it hammered the last nail in Kyoto Protocol’s coffin while doing little to stave off climate change, APA reports quoting The Times of India.

The hosts Mexicans had conveyed that delegates would see the contours of a draft agreement by Friday morning. But negotiators and ministers found that was not so. Most of them whiled away time in the sprawling Moon Palace resort doing precious little. There were concerns about what could really be done to make progress when countries like Japan and Russia had taken a firm stance that they would not sign on to the second phase of Kyoto Protocol.

But some countries, prominently including India, were hard at work along with hosts Mexico holding closed door parleys. In the afternoon the drafts appeared. Mexico had pulled off a coup, it was evident to everyone.

For three years, since Bali Action Plan was signed in 2007 the global community had been asking for a new deal, which would bind countries to much higher emissions targets and to give large sums of monies and green technology to the poor countries.

Till Bali occurred, the Kyoto Protocol imposed firm but small emission targets for the rich world. The largest historical emitter US refused to play ball then. But the Bali deal altered all this. All rich countries except for the US were required to take higher targets under the Kyoto. Special arrangements were to be made for US to take similarly high and comparable emission reduction targets though under some new dispensation as the US abhorred the word Kyoto. The large developing economies, unlike in the past, were now required to also take some actions albeit enabled by funds and technologies.

The US wanted a slow start. It didn’t want to be compared to other rich countries and said it would take a measly target for 2020 claiming it was only beginning on the path of having a green economy and couldnt jump start to deep emission cuts. It also demanded that other emerging economies such as India and China - should too take strong actions because their emissions would otherwise rise in the future.

It was a logjam for three years with each country trying to hide behind the inaction of the other. The Copenhagen Accord, brokered by the US and the BASIC countries, showed the powerful countries a way out in 2010. If the common idea was to bring all rich and emerging economies to a similar platform of commitments, instead of pushing up towards a higher level of commitment for all why not allow everyone to migrate to a plain where all would have lower level of ambitions, a plain at which all countries would have weak targets and it would be a coalition of the unwilling. Kyoto would not be killed, but slowly retired and jettisoned out of sight to an old age home. The Cancun mandate has now packed the bags for Kyoto.

It’s only a matter of time that Kyoto Protocol is hollowed out of but left standing like a decayed tree because bringing it down could be too embarrassing. It would require two-third of the worlds countries to vote to guillotine it. It’s better to let it linger meaningless.