India should press for deep cuts by developed countries: CPI (M)

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Sunday said India should press for deep and immediate emission cuts by the United States and other developed countries, and work with other developing countries to ensure sustainable development and equitable terms in any final treaty.

In a statement, the party Polit Bureau said while the Copenhagen climate change conference ended without meeting its goal of a legally binding agreement for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, a complete failure was averted by the promise of such an agreement in 2010 that was crafted in the closing hours of the meet.

Though the Copenhagen Accord has no legal status and would not bind countries, it at least provides some way of keeping future negotiations going along the current twin tracks. “Without this, the failure of the conference could have meant the collapse of the Climate Treaty and the Kyoto framework. However, this Accord is extremely weak in terms of deep and immediate emission cuts by developed countries that are required to tackle climate change,” the statement said.

The party described the Accord as “deeply ambitious” with several loopholes and the possibility of different interpretations, particularly with regard to emission cuts by developing countries, and funds and technology transfers.

The CPI (M) also said it warned the government that unilateral concessions, before the negotiations, and without conditional linkages to deep cuts by developed countries, would not yield results. “This is indeed what has happened.”

Charging that an agreement in Copenhagen was made impossible by the positions and tactics of the U.S. and other developed countries, it said, that from the first day to the last, the U.S. and its allies tried their utmost to kill the Kyoto Protocol , negate the cornerstone principle of differentiation between the industrialised and the developing countries, and pressurise the developing countries to take on the major burden of reducing global emissions.

“Their inability to achieve these aims was due to the stiff and united resistance put up by the developing countries, a resistance which was one of the few positives in Copenhagen.”

The Copenhagen Accord has several loopholes and is open to varied interpretation

“United resistance by developing countries one of the few positives in Copenhagen”.