Africa leads charge on climate change

The recalcitrant group of industrialised countries came under fire on the first day of Barcelona climate talks with African countries, in an unprecedented move, blocking all negotiations on Kyoto Protocol unless the rich nations provided concrete and unconditional targets for greenhouse gas emissions for the mid-term.

The move, which brought all negotiations on Kyoto Protocol to a halt in the semi-final round of negotiations, found strong support from India, China and other G77 countries.

African nations, operating as a bloc, refused to undertake any negotiations on procedural and side issues unless the developed countries came up with absolute numbers against their commitments under the second phase of Kyoto Protocol, which is to start in 2012.

The googly from African countries enveloped the Barcelona meeting in a storm few had seen coming. As a tactical move, it put the onus back on developed countries, including EU, Australia and Japan, to come up with hard numbers under the protocol, the existing legal instrument for emission reduction under the UN framework.

Gambia, speaking on behalf of the African Group, pointed out that work on aggregate figures for emission reductions by Annex I parties was to be concluded by April 2009 and on the individual figure by June 2009.

"We can't go on discussing processes and procedures till the end of Copenhagen; the developed countries cannot divert these negotiations away from the substantial issues of quantifying their mitigation targets and financial and technological support to developing countries," an Indian negotiator attending the Barcelona conference told TOI.

Despite behind-the-door attempts to assuage African negotiators, the impasse continued into the second day on Tuesday as African countries and the G77 launched a strong media offensive against the attempt by industrialised countries to not take ambitious targets for either emission reduction or finance.

Developing countries have got wary of the move by the rich nations to put aside discussions on their mid-term mitigation targets and instead just etch a long-term target for all countries into a `political statement'. India and other developing countries protested on the first day against such a move, where the chair of one of the two parallel track negotiations, called the `Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperation', tried to prioritise negotiations on just the `shared long-term vision' document at the cost of discussions over other critical components.

Such a move, a negotiator for the G77 group told TOI, would give an overall cap to the carbon budget for the atmosphere but leave out any details of how the burden of reducing emissions would be shared between the developed countries. It could force India and other emerging economies to take on obligations for emission reductions disproportionate to their responsibility and possibly lock the level of energy resources they can access at reasonable costs, he warned.