More than 120 leaders, including prime minister Manmohan Singh and US president Barack Obama, are heading to Copenhagen on Friday, but none held out hope of a deal that could rescue the 12 days of negotiations. “Coming back with an empty agreement would be far worse than coming back empty handed,” said US spokesman Robert Gibbs.
To facilitate negotiations, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton announced that Washington would contribute to a $100 billion annual fund by 2020 to help poor nations, if an overall deal was completed in Copenhagen.
India called this “a very important step” and said that “sustained pressure” by developing countries had led to the resumption of negotiations at the climate summit, hours after the process appeared floundering as a group of developed nations worked on a secret document.
“I think one good thing happened today; the negotiations have resumed on the two-track process,” environment minister Jairam Ramesh said. He said India has a 75% agreement with the US on the issue of “transparency” while 25% disagreement on “monitoring, reporting and verification”.
He also said that India may be willing to consider a wider climate protection agreement once nations agree to extend the Kyoto Protocol. “We can think of alternatives later,” Ramesh said. “If the Kyoto Protocol is going to be abandoned, then it’s going to make a mockery of the entire negotiation process.” Once Kyoto is ratified, Ramesh said he has an “open mind” on a wider agreement that includes nations other than those developed countries already covered by Kyoto targets.
Meanwhile, representatives of the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) and the G-77 bloc met Danish prime minister Lars Loke Rassmussen, who assured them that further discussions would be transparent, based on consensus, and there would be no surprises.
Ramesh had earlier said that a group of developed nations led by British prime minister Gordon Brown was working out a secret document, which they intended to present as a surprise at the heads-of-state level talks. Ramesh said developing countries had not been consulted and host Denmark’s reluctance to reveal anything was “most baffling” and “mischievous”.
On Thursday, prime minister Manmohan Singh, before leaving for Copenhagen, had said that climate change could not be addressed by perpetuating the poverty of the developing countries — a clear hint to the developed world that they should be doing more to resolve the crisis. He said that as a responsible member of the international community, India has announced that it would reduce emissions intensity by 20-25% in 2020 from the 2005 level and is willing to do more.
— With inputs from agencies
