Essay-Shyam Saran.qxp:Layout 1 29/11/11 1:46 PM Page 2
ESSAY INDIA AND CLIMATE CHANGE
The Durban Agenda The December convention will be a critical arena to break the deadlock within the framework of the UNFCCC
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AFP
Environmental activists release lanterns at Lotus Temple, New Delhi
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! DECEMBER 2011
he 17th Conference of Parties (CoP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be held in December in Durban, South Africa. What are the prospects of the Durban meeting delivering on the mandate given to negotiators by the Bali Road Map adopted by consensus at the 13th CoP in December 2007? Neither the Copenhagen CoP in 2009, nor the Cancun CoP in 2010, were successful in fulfilling the mandate of concluding an Agreed Outcome. Instead, these earlier meetings were only able to adopt essentially political, goodfaith declarations while agreeing to continue multilateral negotiations on the key issues involved. The Bali Road Map has two components. The Bali Action Plan reaffirms the principles and provisions of the UNFCCC, concluded in 1992, in particular its principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’. In view of the urgency to undertake climate change action, the Bali Action Plan called for negotiations, under the UNFCCC, leading to an Agreed Outcome, which
would ensure enhanced action on the so-called four pillars i.e. mitigation, adaptation, finance and technology. The first two pillars constituted actions to be taken to reduce overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and actions to enhance the capacity, particularly of developing countries, to adapt to climate change that was already taking place. The next two pillars constitute the means to accomplish these actions. This forms a comprehensive package which must be in line with the basic compact among nations arrived at in 1992, when the UNFCCC was concluded in Rio de Janeiro. The other component relates to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC. Developed countries committed themselves to absolute reductions in their Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in the first commitment period which ends in 2012. Negotiations began in 2006 on commitments to be undertaken by them in the second commitment period commencing in 2012. These negotiations should have been concluded in 2009 together with those on the Bali Action Plan. It is
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