COP13—Bali Climate Conference

The deep frustration shared by the members of G-77, a 130-member bloc of developing countries spanning Africa, Asia and Latin America, to U.S. objections to language in the final text of the roadmap was best echoed by the delegate from Papua New Guinea. If you cannot lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way, a visibly angry Kevin Conrad told U.S. officials to cheers from other delegates.

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It was a dispute over one paragraph in the section on the future role of developing countries to help reduce the emission of greenhouse gases (GhGs).… The G-77 had accepted a draft last night, but this morning we noticed there was a change, Kirit Parikh, member of the Indian planning commission and a delegate on New Delhi’s team to the Bali meeting, told IPS. We are not sure who was behind it. This was unacceptable to us.

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The U.S. government found itself isolated during the final session, as [head of the U.S. government delegation, Paula] Dobriansky insisted on the mechanics of mitigation in the developing world being placed as a priority because developing countries have made statements (about GhG mitigation) but (there are) no commitments. That is what we want. The other powerful player at this meeting, the European Union, threw its weight behind the G-77.

Pakistani ambassador Munir Akram, chairman of the G-77, told journalists: We, the developing countries, have had an uphill battle at this conference to protect our legitimate interests. We had to fight every inch of the way to secure our objectives.

He even hinted that threats, including trade sanctions, had been made. While Akram did not elaborate, European diplomatic sources involved in the negotiations revealed that U.S. delegates had, at one point, introduced issues such as good governance in the developing world as a condition for Washington to be part of the Bali Roadmap.

Responsibility needs rights.

The tragedy of the atmospheric common has been the lack of rights to this global ecological space. As a result, countries have borrowed or drawn heavily and without control. They have emitted greenhouse gases far in excess of what the Earth can withstand. This was because they could emit without limits or quotas and were “free riding” on this natural capital. Some researchers have called this the “natural debt” of the North, as against the financial debt of the South.

This is the science and the politics of CO2. One tonne of CO2 emitted in 1850 is the same as a tonne emitted today. The greenhouse gases … have long lifetime in the atmosphere; these gases are still warming the atmosphere, at any given year. The ‘sinks’—forests, oceans and soils—are the only cleaners of this dirt. The net emissions add up to the space that a nation has appropriated in the global atmospheric common and therefore its responsibility for the climate change.

Calculated in terms of the total emissions of each country, since the early 1900s, we find that every living American carries a natural debt burden of more than 1,050 tonnes of C02 (see graph: Cumulative CO2 emissions⁶). In comparison, every living Chinese has a natural debt of 68 tonnes and every living Indian, a mere 25 tonnes. Therefore, even with all the talks of India and China catching up with rich world in terms of total emissions, the fact is in terms of natural debt it will take many more decades before this happens.

This principle was accepted by the climate convention, which agreed that the rich world had to reduce its emissions to make space for the poor to grow. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol set the first, hesitant and weak, target for reduction by the rich countries. But this agreement has been more of less reneged on. The per capita emission of CO2 from fuel combustion in the US is still roughly 20 tonnes per year; between 6 tonnes and 12 tonnes for most European countries. This is not comparable to the per capita emissions of China, roughly 4 tonnes and 1.1 tonnes in India.

Myth 1: China and India are energy-inefficient and therefore grossly polluting. However, recent reports show this belief is founded on myths. The World Bank, in its October 2007 report on growth and CO2 emissions, finds that India is 1.5 times more efficient than the US in terms of emissions calculated in purchasing power parity terms. Highly-abused China is slightly more inefficient than the us— despite being the world’s largest manufacturing hub (see table: Comparative emissions efficiency⁸).