A rough yardstick for identifying which Asian countries make the biggest ripples in Cancún is the number of journalists who crowd around the spokesperson immediately after a press conference.

India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh (right). Credit: UN Photo/Aliza Eliazarov

Top Chinese negotiator Xie Zhenhua does attract a fair crowd, but his popularity is constrained by the fact that he requires an interpreter, which does not allow for repartee or off-the-cuff remarks when there is a volley of questions by journalists thrusting their microphones at him.

Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has certainly come into his own on this score. As the spokesperson for the BASIC group of countries, which includes Brazil, South Africa and China, he is articulate, well-informed and witty. Journalists swarm around him after a press conference, eager to get him make a scathing remark about another country or group of countries.

This was very evident at a BASIC media meet where he listed, among three “non-negotiables”, the need for fast-start financing. “It hasn’t been fast, hasn’t even started and there is hardly any finance,” he quipped.

Ramesh expressed deep concern about the U.S. offer to reduce carbon emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, which worked out to a four percent reduction from the 1990 levels used as a baseline by Kyoto Protocol parties.

He argued that without domestic legislation, executive action could only achieve 14 percent reduction from 2020 on 2005 levels, which translates to zero percent reduction of carbon emissions from 1990 levels.

“By any standards, the U.S. offer on emission reduction for 2020 is deeply disappointing,” he said. “It’s one thing being ambitious for 2050 when all of us will be dead but the real issue is… are you going to be held accountable for 2020? Mid-term targets are very essential.” The U.S. plans to reduce its carbon emissions by 80 percent from 2005 levels by 2050.

“We would certainly expect the United States to better its emission reduction commitments as well as its offer on fast- start finance,” Ramesh said, pointing out that the lag “did no justice to the world’s pre-eminent economic power”.

He articulated the criticism of the U.S that very many delegates have been saying in the Cancún corridors but not on an open platform. The irony is that Ramesh had been seen, in the build-up to the Copenhagen talks last December, as a politician too close to the U.S.

He wrote a confidential letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, arguing that India voluntarily should accept cuts in emissions, as the U.S. has been asking China and India to do. Opposition political parties pounced on this leaked letter and he had to disown it.

With his present penchant for battling the U.S. and any other opponents of equitable agreements in Cancún, Ramesh has reinvented himself as the representative not only of South Asian negotiators but probably all of Asia. In fact, there is a sense of déjà vu, since India played this role to the hilt at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

It is not only style that Ramesh has been amply demonstrating in Cancún, but substance as well. In November, he wrote to Todd Stern, U.S. President Barack Obama’s special envoy on climate change, to present a compromise on the contentious issues of developing countries having to monitor, report and verify (MRV) their climate control actions in return for funding, along with international consultation and analysis (ICA).

He proposed that ICA should take place every two or three years for countries whose emissions exceeded one percent of the total. The regime for developed countries would be far more rigorous. Every country would have to submit these to a Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI). There would be full transparency on all these reports. At Ramesh’s press conference specifically to explain India’s role on climate issues, copies of India’s inventory of emissions were distributed.

In his press meet, Stern referred approvingly to Ramesh’s draft. He thought that his proposal that developing countries prepare a report which updates the data of their national commissions and includes information on inventories, mitigation actions, pledges and critical assumptions on reducing emissions, and how these were different from business as usual, would be welcome.

However, he referred to how some of these were “very variable concepts”. For instance, China and India had each stated targets by which they would reduce the carbon intensity of their economies, as a percentage of their GDPs, but each country had its own method for calculating their GDP, which presented problems.

But Ramesh, always regarded as a maverick in the staid Indian political class, may be playing a game of his own. On Wednesday, he did a volte face by declaring that India was ready to accept binding emissions cuts, which changes a 27- year-old official position.

This might explain his histrionics regarding the U.S., while actually capitulating to its pressure, along with that of other small island states and fellow South Asian countries, which are in a hurry to receive fast-start financing.

He claimed he was being flexible and wanted to be proactive in breaking the impasse in Cancún. Whether this tactic will work, or will rebound on India, the next few days will tell.

Japanese NGOs feel that Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s categorical statement in parliament on Monday that his government would not under any circumstances be party to a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in that historic city in 1997, went “beyond irony”.

The timing of Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan's statement was deliberate, NGOs say. Credit: White House photo

Although the government’s position on not proceeding with a second phase of the protocol, which begins in 2012, has been known for a couple of years, this is the first time that the prime minister has publicly stated it in public. The announcement on the opening day of the U.N. climate summit in Cancún was timed to drive home a point.

Yuri Onodera, programme director for Climate Change and Energy of Friends of the Earth, Japan, told journalists Wednesday, “Japan’s move to drop out of the Kyoto treaty shows a severe lack of recognition of its own historical and moral responsibility. With this position, Japan isolates itself from the rest of the world. Even worse, this step undermines the ongoing talks and is a serious threat to the progress needed here in Cancún.”

He told TerraViva the government’s move may have arisen due to “frustration over the process” regarding major emerging economies in general, and China in particular, not agreeing to commit to reduce their emissions.

The prime minister’s move also came in the context of increasing tensions between the two major Asian countries.

“Specifically regarding China, Japan has a territorial dispute. There is also economic competition, with China surpassing Japan as the world’s second biggest economy. There is sentiment involved, I suppose,” Onodera added.

However, Onodera, who had been active with many fellow activists in helping forge the Kyoto Protocol 13 years ago, still expects the government to commit to combating global warming.

“Japan recognises its place in the international community,” he said. “It would like to present a good face and project itself as a consensus builder. It is a truly significant for Japan, for its public image and its foreign policy. It is a matter of national pride. It would not like to be seen as dealing with this issue single-handedly.”

“Many people will be watching if Japan is seen as not participating in the process,” he continued.

The government felt that substantive progress had been achieved after Copenhagen. If its role as consensus-builder went the wrong way, Japan would be seen as a blocker, which it would not like and the prime minister could change its policy, he said.

He did not think that the U.S. would treat this as a precedent and cite Japan’s pull-out to justify its own hard line against the Kyoto Protocol.

“This administration is different,” he felt, “it won’t destroy the process openly. I truly hope that the U.S. doesn’t. The continuance of the Kyoto Protocol is critical for underdeveloped countries to be engaged in the process.”

Asked by TerraViva whether the Japanese prime minister’s statement had any resonance in U.S. climate policy, Dr. Jonathan Pershing, a top U.S. negotiator, said that since the U.S. was not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, it was not for it to comment on this development.

However, he added that he was aware of “previous discussions” about Japan’s opposition to a continuance of the treaty, on which Japan was “quite clear”. There were now two tracks – one for continuing with Kyoto and the other without.

“It is every country’s right to take its own decision, just as it is important for a group of countries to move forward,” he said.

“Russia is also a concern in this respect,” Ondera told TerraViva. “It has made its support for the second phase of the protocol conditional on other major emerging economies, but at the same time, it is also flexible. Japan is moving in the opposite direction and will be isolated.”

NGOs in Japan were engaging with government policies of all ministries and mobilising the public to tackle global warming. “Recent economic issues, including nearly five percent unemployment, had diverted the attention of the government and opened up policies to hardline elements,” he concluded.

The U.N. climate talks in Cancún are seen as a critical test in which the credibility of the multilateral process of the climate talks and trust of developing countries can be reestablished, said Friends of the Earth. Developing countries suffer from the impacts of climate change caused by industrial countries like Japan. In spite of this, Japan had made its intentions more than clear during the first two days in Cancún.

Friends of the Earth International has urgently demanded that Japan reconsider its position and stop stalling climate talks, which have just begun. All rich countries, including Japan, should agree on cutting their emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020, without resorting to carbon offsetting, and agree to doing this under a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, the group said.

People living in the Himalayan region are increasingly confronted by rising temperatures and glaciers melting at an unprecedented rate, threatening their very survival. This much the world already knows.

Yet, experts say, there is still no accurate and reliable data on the Himalayan glaciers and many aspects of its ecosystem, which should facilitate determining mitigation measures addressing current and future impacts of climate change on the Himalayas.

Nepal Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal acknowledged this when, speaking briefly at a side event organised during the United Nations climate change summit on Wednesday, he made a passionate case for the Himalayan countries to jointly determine the effects of climate change on what is sometimes termed “the third pole.”

The U.N. climate talks, which opened on Dec. 7 in this Danish capital, will conclude Friday, Dec. 18.

The Himalayan region straddles six countries, namely, China, Nepal, India, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Pakistan. Considered a climate change hotspot, it divides India from the Tibetan Plateau. Its river basins supply water to some 1.3 billion people. Thus the potential disappearance of the glaciers threatens the survival of the people.

Erik Solheim, Norway’s environment minister, cited three reasons for studying the Himalayas. One was its pristine beauty; second, climate change impacted more people in the region than anywhere else in the world; and finally, the region was also rife with political tension and conflicts.

Glaciers in the 33,000-kilometre-long Himalayas cover an area of 100,000 square km and store a staggering 12,000 cubic km of water. Rapid glacial melting has been attributed to rising temperatures.

“The average temperature in Nepal’s highlands has gone up. There are 20 new lakes formed as a result of glaciers melting, which can break up any time, causing catastrophe. No country in the region is immune to climate change.”

Although Nepal contributes only 0.025 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to its Prime Minister, it is a frontline nation for climate impact. Nepal now chairs the group of 49 Least Developed Countries in the climate negotiations.

Early this month his government held a cabinet meeting 5,541 metres above sea level at the base camp of Mount Everest, the highest mountain peak in the Himalayan range and located at the Nepal-China border.

“We want to protect Mount Everest from global warming,” he said on the sidelines of the summit. “We announced a ten-point programme, which includes clean energy, increasing forest cover in the region to 40 percent and raising the amount of land in sanctuaries from 20 percent to 25 percent. We want to save our common heritage.”

Dr Arshad Muhammd Khan, executive director of the Global Change Impact Studies Centre in Islamabad, said Pakistan is the most vulnerable in the region. It has the largest irrigation network in the world. The Indus, one of the Himalayan rivers, is the South Asian state’s lifeline: it depends on Himalayan glaciers for 80 percent of its inflows.

“The glaciers are melting faster than elsewhere; several may disappear by 2035 (as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts),” Dr Khan observed. “There are fears of glacial lake outbursts. Coastal areas near Karachi are witnessing the ingress of salinity.”

Asked whether political problems intervened to prevent Pakistan and India from sharing data and working together to monitor change in the Himalayas, Dr Khan told IPS, “We can sort it out.”

His colleague, Dr Qamar-Uz-Zaman Chaudhry, director-general of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, was more sanguine. “We are very close,” he said. “We exchange real-time data on tropical meteorology, like cyclones. On mountains, we need to cooperate on data.”

He added: “There is a bilateral agreement on hydro-meteorological data under the Indus Water Treaty.” This treaty, brokered by the World Bank in 1960, has not been abrogated despite several wars and ongoing hostility between the two countries.

The event was convened by Dr Andreas Schild, director general of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu. “The Himalayas are a hot spot for climate change,” he asserted. “They are the source of ten major river basins, and 1.3 billion in the region depend on them,” said Dr Andreas Schild.

ICIMOD has already conducted a vulnerability assessment of some areas in the Brahmaputra river valley in the Himalayan range.

Dr Pal Prestrud, director general of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, drew a parallel between research on the Himalayas and that on the Arctic between 2000 and 2004. This could “provide insights into the Himalayas, which are in many ways, the same,” he said.

Information on the Himalayas was scattered and it was necessary for scientific associations to “bring it all together, synthesise and focus it,” said Prestrud.

Expressing optimism, Norway’s Solheim said, “There will be an increase in catastrophes, but these can also have the positive effect of bringing people together, as it did after the Asian tsunami in Aceh in Indonesia five years ago. It has been completely rebuilt.”

Nepal’s Prime Minister has offered to set up a network of mountain countries from all over the word, which, he said, would form a strong lobby. Prof Syed Iqbal Hasnain, a top Indian glaciologist now working with The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, told IPS that the Arctic Council, which former U.S. vice-president and 2007 Nobel Peace laureate Al Gore had referred to in Copenhagen, could provide a platform for Himalayan researchers too.

“Otherwise, these countries are fighting each other,” Prof Hasnain observed. There were similarities between the two regions when it came to climate change. “The Arctic also has traces of black carbon.”

(*This story appears in the IPS TerraViva online daily published for the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen.)

Much of the discussion in Copenhagen has revolved around targets and deadlines for cutting carbon emissions. But a weekend seminar in the idyllic Danish island of Samsoe, titled “Future Energy,” helped journalists locate the problem in the context of the world’s biggest emitters.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) drew out future scenarios, assuming that all these countries did not exceed 450ppm (parts per million) of carbon dioxide, which is considered the cap to prevent irretrievable climate change. Many developing countries believe 350ppm is a safer option.

One such scenario shows a bias against the Asian region, because it favors the rich nations.

Richard H. Jones, IEA deputy executive director, divided major emitters into three groups, the first being the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other rich countries, including Japan. The second consists of “other major economies,” which include China and Brazil, along with the Middle East, Russia and South Africa. India and the ASEAN (Association of South-east Nations) countries figure in the last category, along with all other developing countries.

Under a phased approach, OECD nations have national emission caps till 2020. Only after this date do the other major economies take on such caps. Till 2030, the last group, which includes most Asian countries, focuses only on national measures – which the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change terms “nationally appropriate”.

The findings are contained in the ‘World Energy Outlook 2009′, released last month, which found that for the first time since 1981, global energy demand declined this year because of the economic downturn.

Interestingly, the IEA, which was set up by OECD after the oil price hikes in the 1970s, believes that a precondition for emissions peaking by 2020 is a price of 50 U.S. dollars per tonne of carbon dioxide in power generation and industry for the first group. It also posits investments of 200 U.S. billion dollars in non-OECD countries by 2020. But the catch is that these are to be supported by OECD+ countries (non-OECD European Union countries) through carbon markets and co-financing while developing countries prefer transfers of public funds.

Of China’s projected abatement of 1.2 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide in the 450ppm scenario, as much as 1.0 Gt is from national policies, 0.08 Gt from international carbon trading (a market-based mechanism to control greenhouse gas emissions), and the remainder from international sectoral standards in transport and industry.

India’s contribution in its reduction of 0.25 Gt is mainly from carbon trading, while national policies account for around 0.1 Gt. Japan’s reduction of 0.1 Gt is largely through buying carbon credits.

A redeeming feature of the future energy scenario is that in South Asia, there will be 489 million without electricity in 2030, 125 million less than in 2008. The corresponding figure for East Asia will be 73 million in 2030, down from 195 million last year. The only region where the number goes up is sub- Saharan Africa, by a little over 100 million.

In both China and India, oil imports will drop by 10 percent and 15 percent, respectively, by 2030. The IEA estimates that 2.3 trillion U.S. dollars of investments are required between 2010 and 2030, of which the bulk is on transport, including for India, ASEAN and all other economies. This reveals the bias of the scenario, which reflects the interests of industrial countries. Most Asians do not use motorised transport, so the emphasis on this sector is misplaced.

The energy think-tank Prayas, based in Pune, India, has also come up with scenarios for China, India as well as the U.S. and EU, for 2020, based on current assumptions. China, on President Hu Jintao’s announcement of 40-45 percent emission intensity reduction below its 2005 levels, will emit 10 tonnes per capita of carbon dioxide, 1.7 times the 2005 world average, with total emissions of 13.7 Gt.

India, on Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh’s offer of a 20-25 percent cut in intensity, will have 2.8 tonnes per capita (only a little more than twice the current figure), half the global average.

“Although Indian energy use may be large due to its size, it needs to be seen differently from China,” says Girish Sant, an analyst with Prayas, who is in Copenhagen. “The clubbing of India with China, since Kyoto, has been a construct useful for Annex-I (industrial countries) to hide behind. This has done sizable harm to climate policies.

“IEA has data on energy prices and renewable energy tariffs, so it should compare these to check which countries are promoting renewable and send good price signals. It should talk about the 50 percent higher gasoline prices in India and EU compared to China and the U.S.”

In a paper submitted in October to the journal ‘Advances in Climate Change Research’ on China’s long-term mitigation targets and carbon permit allocation, He Jiankun and three co-authors from the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing argue that in the negotiations, “reasonable rights and interests should be strived for, based on the equity principle, reflected through cumulative emissions per capita”.

Since China’s historical cumulative emissions are only one-tenth of the average in industrial countries and one-twentieth that of the U.S., it “should obtain reasonable room for future development”.

Furthermore, long-term mitigation targets should be related to industrial countries’ commitment of deeper emissions in the near and mid-term. Long-term global mitigation targets ought to be ensured by commitments of “adequate and quantified” financial and technical support of developed to developing countries”.

“At present, ” they write, “China’s economic development is more and more restricted by domestic resources availability and environmental capacity…. Long-term global target for addressing climate change is not only a great challenge for realising the three-step modernisation goal of China, but also an important opportunity for accelerating the transformation of economic development pattern and achieving sustainable development. Therefore, China must adapt to the world’s transformation trend of economic society characterised by low carbon development.”

(*This story appears in the IPS TerraViva online daily published for the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen.)

China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, has stolen a march over the rest of Asia in unilaterally declaring its carbon intensity cuts a day after President Barack Obama did late last month for the U.S.

The U.S. has proposed a 17 percent cut below 2005 levels by 2020—less than one-seventh of what the European Union has committed. India, the fifth largest emitter, was forced to fall in line, so as not to be seen as recalcitrant.

Both China and India have toed the U.S. approach in citing their voluntary reductions from 2005 levels, whereas the Kyoto Protocol regime has stipulated emission cuts from 1990. This puts China’s offer of reducing its carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 and India’s 20 to 25 percent in a different perspective.

Since emissions have been rising in these two giant economies between 1990 and 2005, the reductions are not so ambitious and do not deviate that much from business as usual.

China has also taken the lead in cobbling together a new BASIC coalition— consisting of Brazil, South Africa, India and China. The four have listed their “non-negotiable” demands: no legally binding cuts, unsupported mitigation actions, international monitoring of unsupported mitigation actions and use of climate as a trade barrier. They threaten to walk out of the United Nations climate change December conference in Copenhagen if industrial countries browbeat them.

Reportedly, China’s Premier Wen Jiabao summoned India’s Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, who was in Beijing in late November, to an unscheduled meeting and told him that China planned to lead the developing world in presenting a united front against the West. He was literally given a night to read the BASIC draft and sign on the dotted line.

This is a far cry from the precursor to Copenhagen, the U.N. Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, when India represented G77 developing countries (now increased to 130). India’s Environment Minister at the time, Kamal Nath, baited the U.S., led by President George Bush, Sr. The White House was so incensed that it admonished then Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, who had to tone down his rhetoric at the summit.

India has tied itself in knots on its stand on climate. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed to abide by the two degrees Celsius cap on rise in global temperatures at the Group of Eight wealthiest nations meetings in Italy in July.

Indian negotiators criticised him for compromising India’s future growth prospects. Subsequently, Ramesh wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, leaked to the media, suggesting India offer voluntary cuts in emissions and subject these to international verification. This triggered off a political furore in India, prompting him to retract his letter. China, by contrast, is consistent in its policy.

“India is a leader of the developing world,” says Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi. “It should campaign for the voice of the marginalised and victims of climate change.”

She adds: “India should avoid sitting at the high table with polluters (rich countries). Therefore, we have to put pressure on the North to take effective emission cuts. That will be a real leadership role.”

On Dec. 3, when India announced its policy, Qin Gang, the spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reiterated that China and India were developing countries and victims of climate change. China understood the Indian situation on climate change and would support India’s adaptation and mitigation plan that was based on its own national situation and capacity.

However, there are vast differences between the two countries. Between 1990 and 2005, per capita energy use increased by half in China—three times more than in India. Jairam himself has referred to China’s carbon intensity— the amount of carbon emitted per 1,000 U.S. dollars of GDP— 2.8 tonnes as against India’s one tonne.

As Huo Weiya of the independent online publication ‘Chinadialogue’ in Beijing observes: “Three decades of economic growth have given the Chinese citizenry ample material desires; a lifestyle has by now taken root that hopes to keep up with the rich, particularly to keep up with the Americans.”

Some Chinese and Indian experts are uneasy about their countries unilaterally offering carbon intensity cuts. Qi Jianguo, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the targets would put “great pressure” on China’s development.

Before India announced its policy, Sunita Narain, who is also a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change, warned: “There needs to be a proper deliberative process if India needs a carbon or energy intensity number. That has still not been done. It must not make a laughing stock of itself by announcing new numbers every day; it should stick to its own 20 percent by 2020 domestic commitment.”

She alleged that India’s changing position reflected U.S. interests, not its own. “It is clearly at the behest of the U.S. president. It will derail the multilateral negotiations,” she said.

* Darryl D’Monte is president of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists.