Why is Jairam Ramesh singing a different tune?

M K Venu

29, October 2009
 

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh’s recent utterances suggesting India should have a more constructive engagement with the developed economies on climate change issues has caused both confusion and consternation among India’s policy wonks. Confusion occurred because he challenged the perceived wisdom that India must not yield any ground to the developed economies which are clearly responsible for over 70 per cent of the existing stock of greenhouse gas emissions globally. There was consternation because India needs its own carbon space in the future to meet the basic material needs of some 800 million people who are at the lowest end of the consumption cycle. For instance, the per capita energy consumption of 800 million Indians, equal to the combined population of the US and EU, would probably be less than 150 units a year, compared with 8,000 to 10,000 units per person in the West. So the conventional Indian reflex is to not yield an inch to the West on this score.

However, the apparent confusion caused by Ramesh has another serious dimension which cannot be ignored. There is a growing self-perception, especially among the urban middle classes, that India is now a rising global economy and must therefore behave like one. It must act responsibly and contribute to the global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So the environment minister was probably reflecting this thought process emanating from a new, even if somewhat nascent, self-image of India. This self-image gets further reinforced when India becomes part of newly empowered groupings like the G-20, which is called upon to explore new frameworks to deal with issues like an alternate global financial architecture or climate change. After all, there has to be some shift in India’s position from the 1970s when Indira Gandhi repeated ad nauseam at various global forums that, “poverty is the greatest polluter”.

But poverty still remains a big polluter, though not on the scale it used to be. Consequently, it is a sort of split personality that India projects at crucial negotiations that deal with issues like climate change. So Jairam Ramesh was merely articulating the inner tensions of an “emerging economic power with considerable poverty”.

Mind you, China has the same problem at these negotiations. It has officially projected that it would be a fully-developed economy by 2030. Yet, like India, in negotiations relating to climate change or the WTO, it projects a split personality. Some years ago both India and China stoutly resisted an attempt in the WTO to officially describe them as “advanced developing economies”, so that the benefits going to the least developed nations could not be denied to them. This again results from the same paradox. Becoming rich, yet remaining so poor!

This is precisely what India is having to deal with in the run-up to the climate change negotiations at Copenhagen in December. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wants to cooperate with the US and EU, and does not want to be seen as a deal-breaker. Yet, political pressure is building up back home that India must not compromise an inch the future carbon space of 800 million poor Indians with a per capital income of less than a dollar a day.

The attempt at Copenhagen is to evolve a larger framework for standardised emission cuts by both the developed and developing nations so that the concentration of greenhouse gases is kept well under control. Currently the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is about 385 parts per million. It is estimated that global temperatures could rise by 2 degrees Celsius if the CO2 concentration goes above 400 parts per million. This could play far greater havoc with the developing nations with bigger populations.

But the key question is how to undertake cuts in a manner that the developed world pays for the adjustment costs as per the “polluter pays” principle. India’s position has been articulated by the prime minister who has said our per capita emissions will not exceed that of the average of the developed nations. This has come to be called “the Manmohan convergence principle”. This principle is expected to give India enough carbon space to accommodate its development imperatives.

India’s per capital carbon emission today stands at close to 1.5 tonnes a year. The average per capita emissions of the developed world is around 10 tonnes. The convergence principle suggests that India’s per capita emissions could move up from 1.5 tonnes and converge with the gradually reducing per capita emission of the rich nations at some point.

Of course this principle is not acceptable yet to the US and EU, who are loathe to even look at per capita emission as a basis of providing future carbon space to emerging economies like India and China. The US and EU want nations to agree to absolute emission reduction targets.

A recent empirical study by experts (in the Economic and Political Weekly of October 10) shows that if emission cuts suggested by America’s proposed Waxman-Markey bill were followed, then the emerging economies’ per capita emission would converge with that of the developed world by 2025 at about 6 tonnes of CO2. This means emerging economies like India will probably lose further carbon space beyond 2025.

So, even the Manmohan convergence principle appears to be a generous offer, as per this study which says the most optimistic scenario of emission cuts proposed by the West would ensure that the OECD nations would still account for 50 per cent of greenhouse gas stocks by the end of this century! This clearly shows that the developed nations do not want to compromise their own consumption patterns over a longer time period in the hope that emerging economies will play a bigger role in keeping further global warming under check. To say that there is an element of hypocrisy in their position would be a gross understatement. This hypocrisy is further reinforced in the latest data provided by the UNFCC which shows most developed economies have increased carbon emissions in the past ten years.

Among the signatories of the Kyoto protocol only France, Germany and UK have achieved carbon emissions at below their 1990 levels. This too has been met partly by using the carbon offset mechanism in which increased emissions are traded with the developing world. The way things are going so far, Copenhagen does not inspire much confidence.

Courtesy: Indian Express, October 28, 2009
 

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