Indischer Sondergesandter: Nicht genügend Fortschritt zu Klimaabkommen[en] 

You have just attended a two-day meeting of the world's 17 biggest greenhouse gas emitters, which ended in Washington a few days ago. Any progress? 

It would be wrong to say that we did not make any progress, but we achieved much less than what we should have achieved by this time if we wanted to have an ambitious package in Copenhagen. 

Over 30 national proposals have been submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in recent weeks, but these reveal that there is still a significant divide between rich and poor countries' positions. How can this be bridged? 

Indeed, not enough progress has been made in finding convergence in the respective positions that countries have. 

You are right. A number of submissions have been made and these are submissions on each of the issues which are currently being assessed [mitigation, adaptation, technology and finance]. 

These will now be put in some kind of document, which will hopefully be the basis for a possible negotiating text. How far we will be able to bridge the differences and positions, I think at the moment it is rather premature to say. 

But considering the situation, will we have a negotiating text by June as planned? 

I cannot say with any certainty that there will be a negotiating document, but certainly there is an effort going in this sense. We hope that with the submissions, we will be able to come up with a negotiating text, which will of course reflect the different positions of the different countries. I hope that will allow us to look at the actual language of the decisions that will emerge from Copenhagen. 

On the four pillars discussed (mitigation, adaptation, technology and finance), what would be India's preferred outcome in Copenhagen? 

I don't think there can be a favourite outcome for India. I think all of us are looking for an outcome which is in consonance with the scale of the challenges we are facing. 

Over the last year or so, the rhetoric of climate change has heightened considerably. 

As you know, we are talking about this being an element of threat to humanity. We are saying that we are very soon reaching the tipping point, and that if we don't take action urgently, we will not be able to avoid irreversible damage. With all these predictions, we are heightening the anxiety all over the world. 

Therefore, unless Copenhagen comes up with a response which is in line with the scale of the present anxiety, think what will be the level of disappointment in the world as a whole. 

So, I think the world is expecting Copenhagen to come up with a global response which is in line with the threat which we are facing. 

But if the parties don't manage to reach a fully-fledged agreement but rather settle on a framework, leaving details to be hammered out next year as some in Washington seem to prefer, would that be acceptable?

First of all, why do we need another framework? The framework is already there in the UNFCCC. 

Whenever we hear about a new framework being put into place, the question we should ask is 'what has happened to the commitment that all of us made in the UNFCCC in 1992?' We are not looking at a new climate change treaty. 

We are not looking for yet another framework. Let us not fool ourselves, what we are doing now is translating these commitments, promises that have been made into practical and concrete commitments. That is the mandate of the Bali action plan. 

Fair enough. Let's get into these practical and concrete commitments. The EU urged developing countries to implement low-carbon development strategies. India supports taking mitigation action and has already launched its action plan and missions, but with Brazil, China and South Africa, it opposes the idea of mandatory reporting of such action. Why?

First of all, nobody is asking us to do anything. We are taking action because we are much more concerned about climate change than developed countries are. We are going to be more impacted than developed countries will be. Our margin of safety is narrower than developed countries. 

So, who should be interested in low-carbon growth? This whole idea that 'here are these great developed countries that are doing whatever they can to deal with climate change, and on the other side you have a bunch of developing countries are really not concerned with climate change,' is a distortion or caricature of the situation we are facing. 

Let's not get into the argument of who is doing more and who less, and who is being told what to do. 

We are doing much more within the limit of our resources than, I am afraid, many developed countries are doing within the capabilities they possess. 

Second point, on the action plan. We have put forward our national action plan last year. The important word here is 'national'. This is an expression of what we, as a result of our own domestic processes, have decided that within the limitations we have, we have decided this is what we need to do and this is what we will try and do. Some countries have also done the same, other countries have not. But under the UNFCCC, there is no legal requirement that calls for each country to have a national action plan. 

However, there is a legal requirement for national communications. This is what we are doing in terms of meeting the goals of tackling climate change. India has a national communication in which these actions, according to a certain format, will be put forward before the international community. We have no problem with that, so who is saying that there is no mandatory reporting? 

There is a mandatory reporting requirement under the UNFCCC. Now, if you want to improve that mandatory requirement, then certainly, we are open to that. You want to make that mandatory reporting more elaborate? We have no problem with that, we have nothing to hide. But if you attempt to try to tell us whether the low-carbon strategy is sufficient or not… well sorry, we will not agree. 

You said India is doing what it can within the limits of its resources. Developing countries have called on industrialised countries to commit 0.5-2% of their GDP to funding mitigation and adaptation measures. One of the ideas floated by India, together with others like China and Indonesia, is to use revenue from emissions trading. Are talks going in the right direction for climate finance? 

This is really for developed countries to decide in which ways they want to go for their own domestic structure. We are concerned about the adequacy of financial resources which can be made available within the framework of the UNFCCC to support mitigation, as well as adaptation. 

So if they tell us they cannot make funds available from public revenues, but rather do it from the proceeds of ETS, then that's up to them. The importance for the international community is the adequacy of these resources, and secondly the manner in which those resources are going to be deployed. 

What do you mean by adequacy of resources? What is adequate for you? Numbers? 

The numbers will depend on the level of ambition. You know, adequacy of resources is not an absolute concept. The more ambitious you are, the more resources you will need. But if your level of ambition remains low, you end up with a least-common-denominator result. Then level of resources required will be less.

What is ambitious? What does India find ambitious? 

First of all, we have to have a clear indication of what developed countries intend to do in terms of emissions reductions. At the last working group meetings, we said that if the IPCC recommended to stick to a 25 to 40% emissions reduction by 2020, we would suggest to keep the target at 40% rather than at the low end of the spectrum. That would be ambitious. 

But if we are talking an 80-85% cut by 2050 for developed countries, in order to achieve that, there are things you need to do to achieve that. But you cannot come up with a figure as a political aspiration. You need to do more than that. 

If you say 'I am going to commit to a very large carbon target reduction by 2050, but I will take as a base year 2005,' then others say 'I can only take the current year as a base year'. Even if you talk about a 50% reduction, the level of ambition comes down by changing the base year. 

We are saying: the UNFCCC has already identified 1990 as a base year. The level of ambition has to be accepted upon this base year. 

Are you saying that what the US is proposing in terms of emissions cuts, taking 2005 as base year and focusing on mid-term targets (80% cut by 2050), is not acceptable? 

They want to achieve bigger emission cuts towards the latter part of the period, that is, closer to 2050. They say that they will not be able to achieve the kind of cuts that the European countries have agreed on by 2020. But in terms of the scale of effort, they say their effort is comparable to the European effort. 

That is an argument that needs to be sorted out by developed countries themselves, because for them the issue of comparability was brought up as an important consideration. 

But what is the scale of resources required? 

Targets and these kind of issues need to be sorted out before you can come up with the scale of resources required. 

But if you are looking at a ball-park figure to make a shift from current reliance on fossil fuels to renewable sources by 2050, we are looking at resources in the order of $250 billion or even more. 

Unless you have predictable funds, funds that can be utilised according to the priorities set by developing countries themselves, you are not going to go very far. 

We believe that the Western focus on the market as the source of such funding is not going to give the kind of resources we need. We are not saying that the market mechanism should not be used, but unless we have some method by which we have a large and predictable amount of funding both for mitigation and adaptation, we would not really be coming up with a response which is equal to the challenges we are facing. 

Whether this funding could be set on the basis of GDP, or on the basis of historical responsibility for emissions, or the current per capita emissions levels …there are various criteria that we can put in place. 

Some members of the European Parliament are convinced that it is better to have no deal than a bad deal. Do you agree with such an approach?   

I think we should not look at these kinds of choices. Can we really afford not to have a strong and ambitious outcome in Copenhagen? I think we should ask that question first. 

My sense is that not only developing countries, but also citizens across the globe have been sensitised to this being a very major challenge which will affect the livelihood of people, that will affect even their survival, and leaders across the world are also saying the same thing. 

So, can you really afford to disappoint in all these expectations that have been created? There is no option. We have a framework, we have the commitments. All we need is to come up with actions to fulfill these commitments. 

India does not like to be mentioned in the category of large emitters. But it is the largest emitter in the world after the US and China. Why do you want to be put in a different basket? 

The latest figures of the World Resources Institute from 2005 show that China is number one with 20% of the emissions, United States follows with around 20% too. Although India holds third place, the figures are well below that of China and the United States, with 4.9% of emissions. 

If you take total emissions, we are not number three but number five (after the China, US, Russia and the EU). Certainly in terms of total figures, we are way behind. If you take emissions per capita, our share is 1.7 tons per capita. 

Whereas the United States is 23 times more … so would you still like to call us major emitter? Still, India will still have to sustain a growth rate of 8-10% in the coming years to eradicate poverty. 

How will India manage to overcome energy constraints?

We are already moving in that direction, because over the last decade we have delivered 8-9% growth, with an energy growth of only 3.5-3.7%. That is already a deviation from what would be an arithmetical check. 

Secondly, if we have to avoid the constraints you mentioned, we must make a strategic shift from our current reliance on fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy and conventional sources of energy, like nuclear energy. This is what our national action plan foresees: an increase of our energy efficiency, developing solar energy and biomass as renewable source, developing rapidly nuclear energy, so that over a period of time our energy mix will be very different from what it is today. 

But at the same time, India has geostrategic needs in the Indian Ocean region. In 2005, India and Iran signed a multibillion dollar deal for liquefied gas, and there are talks of building a gas pipeline from Iran to India. What will be the energy mix of India in the next two or three decades? 

The energy mix of India by 2030 will depend a great deal on the success we have with our plans to develop solar and nuclear energy. 

We are adopting very ambitious plans for the development of these resources, but our ability to scale this up and therefore have a larger renewable component in our energy by 2020 would depend on the global climate change regime we have. 

We recognise that over the short term we will not be able to bring about a significant shift in our current energy mix. As far as coal is concerned, our effort is to try to move towards more efficient methods of using coal as a bare source, such as setting up mostly ultra super critical power plants that have a high efficiency level, and secondly, to look at ways in which we can fix carbon affluence from these plants. For example, can we utilise the affluence from these plants to grow algae or produce methanol, which can than be used as fuel? 

There are a number of things in the pipeline, which will enable us both to make the shift towards renewable energy and mitigate carbon emissions from existing sources. 

Another example: if we start making a shift towards a more sustainable way of agriculture, depend less on chemical fertilisers, use more bio-pesticides than chemical pesticides, have cropping patterns that are less water intensive, then we will be able to achieve our goal. There are a lot of good initiatives happening in India, the challenge is how to scale up these experiences to the national level. 

It's not that you have one solution to this problem, you have to work across a very broad front, and that is what the national action plan is trying to achieve. 

What about energy security and India's ties with Iran? 

Energy security is a very major consideration for us. If we do not start now to make that shift towards more renewable sources, our dependence on importers' supply and energy supply will keep on increasing. That will increase the vulnerability of the country. 

But with the kind of requirements that we have, we have to get energy from wherever we can get, sourcing of additional supply from the Gulf, but also looking at potential supply from Central Asia, Russian Siberia, South East Asia. 

In the foreseeable future there is no real alternative. We will continue diversifying our supply chain as much as possible, but also implement the national action plan. The two obviously go hand in hand.