The US-brokered climate deal with India and three other emerging economies reached at the fag end of the Copenhagen summit is “disastrous” for the world as it will allow rich countries to increase emissions, the Centre for Science and Technology claimed today.
“The accord eliminates the distinction between developed and developing countries, prevents effective action to curb global warming and fatally undermines efforts to renew the Kyoto Protocol,” CSE spokesperson Souparno Banerjee said.
After a consensus for an ambitious deal to tackle climate change eluded the 12-day Conference of Parties at Copenhagen, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President Barack Obama delayed their departures by several hours to hammer out a face-saving deal that asks both developed and developing nations to set their emission targets by February 2010.
“The accord will not only be disastrous for the climate, but will also freeze the inequity in the world for perpetuity,” said CSE director Sunita Narain, who attended the discussions at Copenhagen.
“It agrees that developing countries’ actions, which are not supported through international finance and technology also be open to international consultation and analysis, which could become a backhand way of bringing in international commitments on countries like India,” she said in a statement.
Ms. Narain alleged that the accord used “weak and inconsequential” language on cutting emissions from industrialised countries.
“It must be noted that, as yet, there has been an agreement that industrialised countries must cut emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2020. The Copenhagen Accord destroys this agreement as the Accord does not set a firm peaking year for Annex 1 countries.
“It does not set time-bound targets for emission reduction from industrialised countries. Instead it simply says that these countries commit to implement individually or jointly the emission reduction targets that they will themselves submit to the secretariat. In other words, these countries will be allowed to set their own domestic targets, whatever these may be,” she said.
The legally non-binding political deal promised to limit gas emissions to 2 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels and peaking of global and national emissions at the earliest, among other things.
The deal has been rejected by a number of poor countries.
