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Introduction
With Climate Change Negotiations taking place in December 2009 and the count down has already started for Cop 15 at Copenhagen, Denmark. India, is at the Centre stage and is visibly affected. The socio-economic development will remain critical in the negotiations in order to achieve an outcome. India had already expressed its views on several forum and recently Ministry of Environment and Forest had come out with a submission paper to UNFCCC on India’s position on various issues in order to provide logic behind its approach to the climate change negotiations. This was a compilation of India’s submissions made at various stages of negotiations convened by UNFCCC during 2008-2009 to serve as a useful purpose in educating the public on India’s position on climate change related issues. Centad launched the Copenhagen Series in March and second brainstorming was held on 21 August 2009 covering the following aspects:
- Measurable, Reportable and Verifiable Mitigation Actions of Developed countries
- Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions(NAMAs) of Developing Countries
- Enhancing Action on Adaptation
The discussion started with the welcome note by Mr. Linu Mathew Philip, Executive Director of Centad. He welcomed the participants and raised the concern of Climate Change will pose serious challenge be it the fragile agro-ecological zones, industry, livelihoods. Climate change will seriously affect people’s lives.
India’s Submission and the Developments
During the presentation Mr. Kalipada Chatterjee, Senior Policy Advisor to Centad on Climate Change, who was involved in Climate change negotiations since COP 1(Conference of Parties), briefed on the context background on the International Negotiations on Climate Change, which are taking place in pursuance to Bali Action Plan adopted in 2007. He suggested that all the parties of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework on Climate Change Convention) are working to reach on an agreed outcome 1at Copenhagen in December 2009. As a member of these negotiations, India has expressed its clear positioning on several issues which in many ways endorses the G-77 countries position that affects the developing countries.
India’s submissions to the UNFCCC on Climate Change during August 2009 is based on different issues which are Shared Vision, Mitigation actions, REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), Enhancing Action on Climate Change, Finance, Technology Transfer Mechanism, Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, Land Use, Land Use Change & Forestry, Improvements to Emission Trading & Project Based Mechanism.
To keep the discussion more focused the brainstorming was convened to discuss India’s submission to UNFCCC in Aug’09 on three issues only namely- Measurable, Reportable And Verifiable (MRV) Mitigation Actions of Developed Countries, Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions of Developing Countries (NAMA) and Enhancing Action on Adaptation (EAA).
Talking about the NAMA of Developing Countries, it was highlighted that the per capita emissions in developing countries are still relatively low and the share of global emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs. This clearly messages the India and the developing countries need to strongly retain their ‘Right to develop’. Lowering energy intensity of GDP growth through higher energy efficiency is one of the key to meet India’s energy challenge and ensuring energy security, which is important for sustainable development and can address the issue of mitigation. Promotion of Renewable Energy, particularly solar energy will solve the energy issue of the country. In addition, India has by now gained considerable experience in implementing CDM projects. Such experience has provided considerable knowledge and experience for launching NAMAs and after having such experience we have a mechanism setting in the country to verify, & quantify emissions reduction.
The second issue of concern is the issue of MRV’s of Developed Countries. Document highlighted that the largest share of historical and current global emissions of GHGs has originated from developed countries. Therefore, Developed Countries should “take the lead” in climate change mitigation in accordance with CBDR.
Also developing countries are not required to adopt a new commitment to implement measurable, reportable and verifiable mitigation actions in the absence of enabling financial and technological support from developed countries.
A similar mechanism like the CDM (Clean Development Mechanisms) should be developed and Compliance mechanism should be strengthened and should be ensured that what ever has been agreed upon, even in Copenhagen, should be compliance by parties and if not, then what are the kinds of penalties can be thought through.
Another important issue is to implement actions on ground by developed countries that can actually show that they are reducing emissions, for this, technology transfer to remove the technology barrier is an option. But it takes lot of time (more than 10-15 yrs) for a technology to fully transfer and socially accepted and to be able to use it. Efforts must be made to ensure the transfer of these technologies and to monitor the appropriateness, efficacy, social acceptance, market access, and replicability of these technologies and practices. For this, greater awareness should be build among vulnerable communities about climate change as well as harmonize data and information about climate change and its impacts. Communities now need more planned and informed adaptation strategies to protect their lives, livelihoods, wealth, Food Security, Water Security, Coastal Ecology, Economic development, Bio Diversity, Energy security and well-being from climatic disasters. The major obstacle in overcoming these climate change threats are funding, knowledge gaps, dearth of appropriate tools to mainstream adaptation, integrating adaptation in to development process and internalizing Climate Change concerns and its impacts in development plans and projects. Scientists, policy and decision makers, and development partners must work together to understand adaptation needs and develop appropriate and effective approaches for advancing community, local, regional, and sectoral adaptations. In addition, the need of the hour is to mainstream adaptation measures, based of data, analyzed in the form of a draft policy, implemented/ piloted on ground. National policy formulations should be based on studies undertaken from climatic zones of India (flood prone, drought prone, cyclone prone areas) for mainstreaming the same into development process. In addition considerable research would be needed to finally formulate the policy. As adaptation requires huge cost, India would not divert huge funds at the cost of development. With regard to actions, three stages of progress can be opted, to enhance public-private partnership and to involve institutions, CSOs, SHGs to combat the problem, the establishment of institutional mechanisms for guiding and implementing adaptation.
Adaptation remains Critical
Adaptation strategies are needed to strengthen developing countries resilience to these impacts while at the same time protecting national and international efforts to eradicate poverty. Developing countries may also have weaknesses in their human and institutional capacities to deal with climate change and need help to build these up. The missing link is so far no suggestions are made on alternate plan for adaptation, there should be strategies, which should allow for identification of means to increase the flexibility of existing planning processes, the identification of barriers to the implementation of adaptive responses and corresponding solutions, and the analysis of risks associated with various adaptation options.
This mechanism should be intended to build on current experiences in dealing with current climate variability. Technological solutions are imperative in meeting the challenges of climate change. A critical factor in greenhouse gas emissions, technology is also fundamental to enhancing existing abilities and lowering the costs of reducing these emissions.
The problem of poverty is so enormous that developing countries cannot solve it within domestic resource alone. Therefore, the financing for the transfer of technology to alleviate poverty and improve the quality of environment will have to come from external sources, particularly developed countries. The quality of life and good health depend upon the quality of the environment. The number of people of the world whose basic needs are not met in terms of proper shelter, clean water, basic sanitation and adequate health and nutrition levels was never so large as it is today. Therefore, if environmentally sound and sustainable development is to have any meaning at all, it must relate to requirements for the survival of the poor through meeting their basic needs.
For the past sessions of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC, developing countries have constantly requested and reiterated their urgent needs for financial assistance and the transfer of technology. They have had to express their deep regret from time to time that their requests received less attention from the world leaders. At present, technology transfer has still occurred under normal commercial terms, which demand large returns for intellectual property rights. Therefore, it goes against the spirit of the Convention. The governments of the rich countries argue that the private sector companies own the technologies and the better way to get them is to associate you with any flexibility mechanisms; namely, joint implementation, emissions trading and the Clean Development Mechanism. For some poorest countries, if these mechanisms can help their people to have enough food and access to technologies, the governments may be forced to join.
While talking about technology transfer, we don’t know what technologies we actually need and what is the magnitude of cost which will go in developing or transfer or sharing these technologies. The big issue is whether IPRs are barriers for technology transfer. We also have to look on the non-existence of the climate change related technology which in turn creates no demand. To create demand of such technologies so that they can be used, a push in terms of building the capacity of the institutions is required. Adapting to climate change will depend on adjustments and changes at every level - from community-based to national and international. However, the capacity to adapt will vary significantly from country to country, community to community and in particular to the level of development. In general, the preferred adaptation strategies are actions with multiple economic and environmental benefits, including for current and future conditions and needs to be based on sound scientific assessment. The range of practices that can be used to adapt to climate change is diverse, and includes changes in behaviour, structural changes, policy based responses, technological responses
Participants:
Manish Kumar Shrivastava, Research Associate, TERI,Neha Pahuja, TERI, Srikanta K. Panigrahi, Director General, Carbon Minus India (CMI), Mr. Ajay PAIRVI, O.P. Yadav, Ravi Prakash, Ashish Dipankar, D.V. Nityanand, Sanjay Tomer, Tirthankar Mandal, WWF India Rajeev Palakshappa, Supriya Singh, Nitya Nanda, B. Siddarthan, Senior Advisor – Climate Change & Energy Policy,Climate Change & Energy Unit, Kalipada Chatterjee, Sr.Advisor, Climate Change Programme, Centad, Linu Mathew Philip, Executive Director, Centad, Jayashree Gopalan, Centad, Ranja Sengupta,Centad and Santhosh, Centad.
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