On climate, India must reclaim leadership role

The COP29 outcome suggests that India needs to rethink its domestic and international climate strategy

- Shyam Saran

An angry Indian delegate dismissed the outcome document of the recently concluded 29th Conference of Parties (COP29) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as an "optical illusion" which had been "stage-managed" by the Azerbaijani hosts. The stage-managing of the multilateral negotiating process and the selling of optical illusions by advanced Western countries is a long-running saga of short-changing developing countries in tackling the challenge of the global climate crisis.

Up until the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, India did not hesitate to call out Western hypocrisy and mean-minded selfishness. Its position in the climate negotiations was clear and compelling: Countries that had freely signed up to the principles and provisions of the UNFCCC concluded at Rio in 2001, must fulfill their commitments. The principle of historical responsibility acknowledged that the climate crisis was taking place due to the stock of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon, which had accumulated in the earth's atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial age in the 18th century. Current emissions added incrementally to that stock, but the main responsibility for the accumulated emissions in the atmosphere fell on the industrialized countries. They were committed to reducing their emissions in absolute terms. These reductions were negotiated through the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC and were subject to a strict compliance procedure, with significant penalties if they were not delivered. Western countries, led by the United States (US), went about systematically eviscerating the UNFCCC and gutting the Kyoto Protocol. The shredding of these legal instruments, which began in Copenhagen, was completed at the COP21 in Paris in 2015, where we ended up with a universal pledge and review system and, most importantly, jettisoning the principle of historical responsibility.