On The Beat India does not have to choose between countries at climate change negotiations

Nitin Sethi | New Delhi 

November 18, 2014 

It must choose its fights and be sure about what it's fighting for instead of worrying about alliances

Should India move away from China on its climate changestance? Should it sit more with the West now that the US and China have announced their mutually-agreed emission reduction targets for future? This is one clear case where the question creates a very saleable but just as false a binary rhetoric about the climate change negotiations. 

Climate change negotiations are not a war on terror that divides countries along some grand axis in many people's minds. Its economic warfare is as intriguing and layered as a good spy novel. 

Let me try to explain this. 

First things first. The US has not moved more than an inch or two from its long-term plan on climate change that it set when it joined the Bali round of climate talks back in 2007. All other countries, whether willingly, crying hoarse, or on the sly, have moved miles away to accommodate it in the room. That includes EU, China, India and any other country you can name. Even those you can’t. 

US wanted a bottom-up new agreement instead of a top-down approach (such as the Kyoto Protocol). We are nearly set for such a Paris agreement in 2015. It wanted less climate-fighting action in the first half of the century, ratcheting it up in the second half (US was a late starter compared toEU and found it unfair to be asked to do as much immediately as EU had done in two decades). The new targets make sure that that is the case. It did not wish to put equity or intellectual property rights at the centre of the talks. Instead, the US has slowly turned these issues into academic subjects. It wanted the obligations of the developing world to fight climate change delinked from the delivery of finance and technology by rich nations and it has achieved this de-hyphenation substantially. It also wanted the differentiation between developed countries and rest of the world to be done away with. It’s got this firewall to look like a moth-eaten fig leaf. 

Once the world accepted that the US would only join on its terms and that it had to be kept in, climate negotiations have been a war of attrition for the developing world. The battles are driven by short-term competitive economic interests of all countries. Keeping the long-term US vision central, others have worked around, or when it was about making the best of worst situation, worked with the US to safeguard their economic interests as much as they can while the global climate regime is re-engineered. To do so, each country has formed several alliances or come to understandings with others to suit its short-term economic interests. This includes the EU, China, India and any other country that has some economic might to operate in the UN multilateral forums. 

For experts claiming India should move away from China, here’s a reminder of how climate talks work: China, India and the US worked together to counter the EU’s lemon-selling tactics at Copenhagen in 2009. The EU has worked with smaller developing and poor countries to weigh against India and China and, in lesser measure, the US. The EU has worked with the US to muffle the debate on intellectual property rights, public funding of climate change action in developing action and bearing historic responsibility but it has also worked with the smaller developing countries to push for an internationally binding deal that the US doesn't want. 

Faced with a crashing firewall between the developed and developing worlds, India and China have accepted the US’ desire for a domestically-binding 2015 agreement but they have also worked with smaller G77 countries to demand finance, technology and greater commitment in the pre-2020 period. The poor countries came together strongly with the bigger developing economies such as India and China last year to get a deal on Loss and Damage that US was totally against and that the EU was only reluctantly agreeable to. 

Economic interests unfortunately dominate climate negotiations today. There is no climate leader. Countries find alliances that suit them to defend their interests. A partner country on one issue can be a nonchalant friend about another, or even an adversary on a third. The question isn’t really who India should sit with. The question worth asking is: Is India sure what it’s willing to stand for? With others, or without.