This is a very crucial year for the international climate policymakers. The triplet of crisis we faced last year , namely the fuel, food and the financial crisis has left open the pandora’s box that the developing countries were discussing of late. The core of the reason behind the crisis lies in the untenable economic growth paradigm we are currently in. The crisis has also opened up the scope of turning the tide around in a climate friendly and inclusive development paradigm. Time has come for a concerted effort rather than engaging in a blame game in every climate negotiation sessions. It is true that the developed countries are still not acting proactively in terms of actions. Rather they are forcing the big developing countries like India, China, and Brazil to undertake commitments towards emissions reductions, which is not there under any provisions of the Convention. However, this cannot be the reason behind non-action by country like India.
While India has very clearly espoused the National Action Plan on Climate Change at the domestic level, it is yet to spell out to the world what actions it is taking as part of the document. The contentious issues that are being put forward as the part of G77 and China and also at the different workshops include technology transfer, generation, governance, and disbursement of funds. The delegation has put forward the proposal of international technology incubation centres where the policymakers, businesspersons, and the technocrats will be working in tandem to develop the technologies. It also pointed that the climate technologies are not smoothly transferred due to the existence of the stringent IPR regimes. Therefore, to develop climate resilient development goals for the country, India has two fold action points. First, it has to undertake domestic policies to work upon as part of the voluntary actions, which will actually stop the developed countries from blaming them about the inaction by the large developing country group of which India is part (though not created by the UNFCCC differentiation). Secondly, at the negotiations they must be pressing for the developments in terms of technology and finance. The disbursement, deployment and generation of new and additional resources will only lead to fulfillment of the development goals and to meet the MDG goals. One effective way to force a deal by the end of this year is to act frat domestically and ask for more internationally, and a concerted effort in this regard from the group will only lead to fulfill the larger targets of inclusive development. Mere blaming will not lead to meet the ends, lets do it now.
One of the issues is the estimate of the technology transfer and financing support that we need for clean development pathway. Further, we need to stress on the fact that the submissions from the G77 and China has to be pressed very aggressively. In that case we need to lobby with the parties to accept at least in principle the G77 and China proposal. The basic point we need to stress in terms of technology transfer is that it has to happen under the Article 4.7 of the Convention and the developed countries need to fulfill their part of the commitments at the earliest. There should not be any conditionalities attached to while fulfilling the requirements of the Article 4.7.
Also the group discussed about the issues related to IPR and their effect on the climate change technology and thereby came up with the suggestions on having a Technology Declaration which will cover these issues. Another area we have missed completely in the discussions around technology is the need to have proper adaptation technologies in place. Since adaptation is a local issue and can be addressed through developing local actions, we need a detailed study in this regard and have to identify the possible technologies and best practices that we could have provided and scale up for the adaptation activities.
In terms of finance, my own apprehension about the work of CAN is that we have moved a bit forward. In fact now we are talking about the numbers while talking about the requirement of finance. But at the same time we need to develop strong case for the generation of public finance. Currently the basket of generation of finance is loaded with market based solutions. Given the recent past, we all must agree that market is not the answer and we should not over-emphasise its role. Therefore our task as Southern representatives would be bringing forward the issue of public finance. The lobby point here should be the fact that there is little political will in terms of generation of finance. And therefore the governments should be asked to do more and show the right political will. IF the financial crisis can generate trillions of dollars, there is no reason why we could not have money from the public sources for the climate crisis. I think CAN have to build its own position in this regard.
The other most important area of concern is the proposed aggregate targets of the Annex 1 countries. CAN was able to come up with a position paper on this and has clearly mentioned about the fact that the aggregate target should be more than 40 percent reduction of the 1990 level by the year 2020. However, there are real concerns by the AOSIS group within CAN that this target might not be enough to protect their survival right. We need to further deepen our understanding regarding the science of climate change and the political reality. Further, parties have raised questions about the famous Box13.7 at the presentations. Thus leaving behind a grey area which needs to be understood as mentioned above.
Engagement with the Parties and Country representatives:
During the two week in Bonn we as group of CAN did meet with the parties on number of occasions. We did talk about the Annex 1 targets with the Indian delegates. We also met the G77 and China coordinator from Philipines, Ms Brenedita over the issues on technology and the other issues regarding finance and aggregate targets for the Annex 1 countries. We as part of CAN met the AWGLCA chair and discussed about some of the key issues mentioned above. However, the main issue there remained is the finance. How much are we going to get will determine the success of the discussions in future talks. According to him, the finance will unlock the current situation and lead to other sticky issues being addressed as well. Therefore, the CAN paper on finance becomes a very crucial lobby points.
Some thoughts about Future:
Regarding preparation before the sessions, we need to develop a mechanism whereby the delegates representing respective constituencies of would discuss among themselves the key issues that are interest and divide the workload among them to have a detailed coverage and understanding of the process. To that extent, as part of CAN SA, we in India do meet among the Indian counterparts and carried on the exercise post Poznan, but not exactly before the Bonn. What we did is that we shared the important issues among ourselves and focused on them in the time between two sessions which helped in developing the understanding around the issue. However, given the intensity of the negotiations from June onwards, it is important that we figure out the key areas of importance and the sticky points in our respective issues so that we can be very well prepared before the sessions. The Bonn 2 is going to be the first round of discussions on the negotiating texts. Therefore we need really to pull our thing together before it. A pre-sessional before the Bonn at our respective constituencies would be a good idea. The issues like the non-Annex 1 targets, the commitments towards funding and the governance of the funding under different heads are the real issues that are going to be important ones.
There are also important loopholes existing in terms of our own lobby points. We dis-engage with our delegation once we are back from the sessions. Thus we need to develop a strong interactive channel with our delegation. This will help in at least two accounts. First it will lead to long term mutual understanding which is important to push our agenda. Secondly, this also builds on the intelligence gathering part during the sessions.
To my view, there are some important and hectic discussions going to happen during the upcoming sessions. First, the issue of aggregate targets for the Annex 1 countries. This will automatically set the ball rolling for the Non-annex 1 parties for their own targets. The details of how the targets o be meet would be another key area we need to focus on. Then the discussions regarding finance. Once the parties agree on the amount of resources and how they are going to be generated, the rest of the modalities would automatically follow. The key issues to be thrashed out are the modalities. This is not going to happen during the upcoming session alone, and will go on in next sessions as well. It is going to be the stickiest area to discuss on. The parties have their own interests to be fulfilled before they commit on finance. Further, the parties need to get engage and discuss about the G77 and China proposal on the technology and finance, as this is still date the most concrete of the proposals that are on table. The CAN has endorsed the same and it would be good we can lobby for that in future.
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