6.1 Ideas
6.1.1 Equity and differentiation
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6 India onstage – as part of the
chorus: the third phase (2005–2010)
The following chapter contains a narrative and analysis of the three
social forces outlined by Cox – ideas, material capabilities and institutions – and how these interacted with each other at national and international level to create the “framework for action”
(Cox, 1981) within which states operate.
Figure 31 is a timeline of the phase that includes all the most important milestones that will be discussed below in this chapter. As in previous timeline figures, international events are depicted above the date line and Indian events and data below it.
Figure 31: Third phase: from ratification of the Kyoto Protocol (2005) to the Cancun Agreements (2010)
_________________________________________________ Chapter 6. India in the wings: the second phase (2005-2010)
After the Kyoto Protocol came into effect in 200522 much of the focus of negotations at COPs and CMPs turned to planning for the second commitment period (from 2013 onward). By 2006 all parties were highlighting the urgency of agreeing to a post-2012 architecture, but countries were split as to whether this would mean all emitters agreeing to emission reductions or only developed countries, as per CBDR and according to the KP’s so-called “firewall”. India took a firm line on the necessity of maintaining the differentiation inherent to the CBDR principle, apparently struck by the gross unfairness of developed countries – not having done what they undertook to do in the first commitment period – now demanding action from developing countries in the second. In fact India went as far as to describe calls for action by developing countries as “surreal” and a “threat to poverty alleviation efforts” (IISD, 2006). A t COP13 in Bali, India was not, however, able to prevent the inclusion of language on nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing countries (UNFCCC, 2008a: 1/CP.13, para 1(b)(ii)) insised upon by the USA (Christoff, 2008).
Smaller, more vulnerable developing countries like Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), however, increasingly did not support the kind of differentiation that precluded larger emerging economies, like India, from making mitigation commitments.
However, in the absence of certainty about the responsibility of historical emissions (stocks) or clarity on what constituted a “fair” distribution of current emission space (for flows of GHGs), there seemed little likelihood of larger emerging economies voluntarily changing their stance and taking on commitments (IISD, 2006).
Thus at the Bali COP, the idea of differentiation remained a contentious one. The mandate going into the COP was to ensure further implementation of the Convention with a specific focus on the institutional arrangements to be made for the post-2012 years when the first commitment period (2008-2012) of the KP would end (Christoff, 2008). The text on mitigation proved especially difficult to achieve consensus on, highlighting the tension between contending collective ideas. There were two points of contention. The first was between the USA and the EU in relation to the preambular paragraph. The EU wanted an explicit reference to the minimum reduction targets outlined in the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report (AR4); in contrast, the USA would not countenance reference to any numbers. Eventually a compromise was struck, with reference to the IPCC’s finding inserted in a footnote (Clémençon, 2008); this compromise, however, weakened the Bali Action Plan’s (BAP) ability to provide firm parameters for and guidance on the negotiations surrounding the post-2012 architecture (Christoff, 2008).
22 A full discussion of the institutional changes follows in the ‘International institutional arrangements’ sub-section below.
The second point of contention was between the USA, Canada and other developed country parties that wanted stronger language in relation to developing country action, on the one hand, and the G77/China group, on the other, which not only rejected this but sought to bring more attention to the weakness of the Annex I commitments language (IISD, 2007; Christoff, 2008). The contestation centred on Article 1(b)(ii) and the role of MRV in relation to any developing countries’ actions. Talks were deadlocked until, on the day after the scheduled close of the conference, India proposed the language, “nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing country parties in the context of sustainable development, supported by technology and enabled by finance and capacity building in a measurable, reportable and verifiable manner” (IISD, 2007: 15).
This changed order of words moved the focus of the intended MRV from the actions of developing countries to the support to be provided by the developed countries (Clémençon, 2008). The reformulation was intended to ensure that any mitigation actions by developing parties in a post- 2012 regime was actually enabled by technological, financial and capacity-building support from developed countries (Ott, Sterk & Watanabe, 2008; Winkler, 2008) according to the dictates of differentiation and of Article 4.7 of the Convention.23 The USA at first strongly opposed the change of emphasis in the Indian proposal. India’s negotiators were trying to forestall any moves by developed countries that reduced or diminished their commitments and shifted the onus of mitigation onto developing countries (IISD, 2007: 20). This was a clear indication of India’s firmly held belief in differentiation informing their position in relation to institutional operationalisation: a clear case of ideas informing the creation or shaping of the institution. The change in text was accepted by the EU, and after more negotiation (and following unprecedented booing in the plenary) the USA bowed to the consensus and agreed. The full text of the Bali Action Plan was finally agreed upon, which allowed the conference to close (IISD, 2007).
Up until 2007, India’s interpretation of “equity” was unambiguously defined as burden sharing based on per capita emissions and historical responsibility as expressed in the concept of CBDR. This interpretation was predicated on the nationally-held intersubjective idea that India had not been instrumental in causing climate change and therefore need not be part of the solution thereto (Thaker & Leiserowitz, 2013). It prevailed as the intersubjectively held image of the world (certainly among key government decision makers) for nearly two decades – as the Indian “collective response by people to their conditions of existence” (Cox, 2000; Cox & Schechter, 2002). In this
23Article 4.7 states: “The extent to which developing country Parties will effectively implement their commitments under the Convention will depend on the effective implementation by developed country Parties of their commitments under the Convention related to financial resources and transfer of technology and will take fully into account that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country Parties.”
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image of the world, dubbed that of “growth-first realists”24 (Dubash, 2012b), climate negotiations were considered a “containment strategy” used by developed countries to undercut India’s economic growth. Mitigation action demands on the economy – inducing reduced economic growth and development – were deemed both more costly and threatening than climate change impacts. Internationally India demanded equity in the form of an equal right to unrestrained development, but construed questions about domestic equity as attempts by developed countries to hamper its development (Dubash, 2012). The “growth-first realist” view was very prominent, for instance, in PM Singh’s instructions to the Indian delegation heading for the Bali COP: they were not to accept any terms that would impact on the country’s growth rate or ability to reduce poverty (Chauhan, 2007). Thus this world view circumscribed the priorities India delineated, the actions it thought it needed to take, as well as those it believed other countries should embark upon in order to address the impacts of climate change.
In the years from 2007 to 2010 the prevailing ideas espoused by the “growth-first realists” no longer formed a largely uncontested world view in Indian climate discourse (Sinha, 2011). It was at this time that two other possible views began to vie for prominence: that of the “sustainable development realists” (SD realists) and “sustainable development internationalists”25 (SD internationalists). These two world views shared a belief in the negative impacts of climatic changes on India and in the fact that developed countries were using India’s growth as an opportunity to delay their own emission reductions, effectively using India (and other large emerging economies) as an excuse for inaction (Dubash, 2009). SD realists interpreted this as a reason not to trust the international climate negotiation process, which was compounded by their inability to promote the equity agenda. Instead SD realists sought to promote action for domestic reasons (like energy security for example), which resulted in mitigation as a co-benefit, and not to link these with the international process. SD internationalists on the other hand saw the developed country inaction as an opportunity to try to align India’s interests with a strong multilateral regime and so to gain the moral high ground (Dubash, 2009). In contrast to the “growth-first realist” view on equity, both SD positions viewed domestic equity as an important outcome of a shift towards more sustainable development through the “co-benefits” approach (Dubash, 2012b).
An added layer of complexity is that the “growth-first realist” position, while being dominant over time in the Government of India’s positioning at the negotiations, was not necessarily the dominant world view in other sectors of Indian society (Dubash, 2012b). The cynicism regarding the motives of developed countries, combined with belief in the necessity to respond to climate change, has
24This group appeared as the “growth-first stonewallers” in earlier literature by Dubash (Dubash, 2009).
25These two groups have also been referred to as progressive realists and progressive internationalists in Dubash (2009).
been a key element of the “SD Realist” view espoused by many of the Indian environment and development NGOs since the early 1990s – the classic example being Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain’s reframing of the “North’s” position on climate change as “environmental colonialism” in their 1991 treatise Global Warming in an Unequal World (Agarwal & Narain, 1991). Despite the passage of time, Agarwal and Narain’s ideas on equity remained a sustained and important influence on the thinking of many in the Indian climate change field, though particularly those in the NGO community. This much was evident in several of the interviews with NGO members (Krishnaswamy, 2014; Powell, 2014; Raghunandan, 2014).
These three world views are tabulated in Table 3 below. Both Sustainable Development positions represent coherent and contending world views held by different groups of people: Cox’s ideas formed by collective images of the world that diverge from the “common sense” of the intersubjective view of the world.
Table 3: Three Indian world views related to climate change
Source: Based on Table 14.2 in Dubash (2012b) with highlighted cells being additions by author Growth-First Realist Sustainable
Development Realist
Sustainable Development Internationalist Political reading of
climate change Geopolitical threat India as an excuse for inaction – fatalism
India as an excuse for inaction – cooperation Stance on Science Downplays science /
sceptical
Impacts pose serious threat
Impacts pose serious threat
Foundational demand Equity – external [globally]
Equity, globally and nationally
Equity, globally and nationally
Domestic agenda Growth first [address
climate later] Co-benefits Co-benefits
International strategy Stonewall on commitments
Implement change at home, but de-link from global agenda
Implement change at home, AND link domestic and global
Motto “It’s our turn!” “It’s an unfair world.” “Seize the moment!”
Application of Cox’s definitions of the force of ideas
Intersubjectively held
‘common picture’
predominantly uncontested until approximately 2007
Contending ideas formed by collective images of coherent patterns of thought.
These collective-based ideas contest the growth-first realist image of the world, particularly between Bali and Copenhagen/Cancun COPs
Between 2007 – the lead-up to Bali – and 2010 – the lead-up to Cancun – the contestation between these three world views was made very apparent in a series of public statements and counter- statements reported in the Indian media. Indeed, it is in the conflict between multiple and
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contesting collective images that the potential for alternatives to the status quo may become apparent (Cox, 1981: 136). This might be depicted as in Figure 32 below.
In 2007 and 2008 there were multiple statements reiterating the “growth-first realist” world view:
from the PM’s exhortations to the Bali negotiators (mentioned above) (Chauhan, 2007) to Special Envoy Shyam Saran’s statement in 2008 reaffiriming equal entitlement to atmostpheric space, the importance of historical responsibility and ultimately the need to move toward a per capita convergence of emissions (Saran, 2008). Shortly after being appointed in May 2009, the new Minister of Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, was quoted as saying to US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, in July 2009 that “[t]here is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have been among the lowest emitters per capita, face to actually reduce emissions”, while reiterating that continued economic growth for poverty eradication was essential for India (Times News Network, 2009a). These statements neatly encapsulated the contention that the change in India’s domestic material circumstances should not be a factor in international institutional change.
Figure 32: Contending world views over time
The contestation in India became much sharper and much more public during 2009 – the all- important year of the Copenhagen COP. Ramesh’s comments and stance seemed to change, starting with a leaked confidential letter to the PM in October 2009 in which he suggested that India could discard “the Kyoto Protocol, delink itself from G77…and take on greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments under a new deal without any counter guarantee of finances and technology” (Sethi, 2009a). As the annexes and “firewall” between developed and developing countries of the KP were pivotal and institutionalised formulations of the concept of CBDR, suggesting that the KP be discarded was in effect a reversal of position on the importance of differentiation to the Indian negotiating position. To further suggest that India sever longstanding ties with the G77 in favour of a stronger alliance with the G20 went against the Indian view of itself as a moral leader of developing countries. The suggestion viewed as the most egregious was that
India take on GHG reduction without requiring financial or technical support – this was diametrically opposed to India’s annually repeated assertions (as recently as at the Bali COP) of the need to make developing country actions contingent on developed country support, in line with the concept of CBDR and RC and Article 4.7 of the Convention. Ramesh was slated for these suggestions by both members of the bureaucracy and outspoken members of civil society (Indo-Asian News Service, 2009; Jayaraman, 2009). In response to the public condemnation Ramesh defended his leaked letter by saying he had been quoted out of context, but his last suggestion reappeared in more subtle form in the Lok Sabha debate in December 2009.
Below in Figure 33 is a brief timeline leading up to COP15 in Copenhagen in December 2009. It highlights critical statements and events, the reactions to which demonstrate the contestation between world views or ideas that will be discussed in more depth below.
Figure 33: Timeline of significant events in the lead-up to the Copenhagen COP
In the lead-up to Copenhagen, Ramesh had been variously publicly cited as stating that India would go to the talks as a “deal maker, not a deal breaker” and be “proactive”, “flexible” and “realistic”
about reaching a deal (Dhar, 2009; Ghosh, 2009b; Hindustan Times, 2009). Much was made of these kinds of statements in the media and in the Lok Sabha debate on 3rd December 2009: of particular concern was whether being “flexible” meant rescinding long-held ideas about the “polluter pays”
principle, differentiation as the basis of equity and international scrutiny of domestically funded mitigation actions (Ghosh, 2009b; Hindustan Times, 2009; Lok Sabha, 2009; Sethi, 2009a). While these “new” ideas garnered much negative attention for Ramesh within India, at the late 2009 MEF meeting (as seen in Figure 31 above) they were considered signs of positive progress by the UK and USA (De Sarkar, 2009) – international utterances that bolstered the domestically prevalent idea that developed countries would use India as an excuse for lack of action.
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Further progress in this regard followed on from China’s announcement of a voluntary emissions- intensity reduction target in November 2009. The following day, India announced its own unilateral emissions-intensity reduction target of 20%-25% on 2005 levels by 2020. During the Lok Sabha debate a few days later, Ramesh noted the findings of the mid-term appraisal of the eleventh Five Year Plan that India’s emission intensity had declined by 17.06% between 1990 and 2005. Based on this finding the Planning Commission had also concluded that it would be possible to achieve a 20%-25% reduction in emission intensity between 2005 and 2020 (Lok Sabha, 2009: 243). The necessity of this reduction was a consequence of India’s long-standing energy security concerns, but it also had the benefit of being a good emissions mitigation option. This was an example of the co- benefits approach promoted by both SD realists and SD internationalists (see Table 3 above), in sharp contrast to the prevailing “growth-first realist” position of much of the government and the bureaucracy.
Days before the Copenhagen COP, Ramesh outlined India’s so-called “red-lines” at the negotiations during a speech to the Lok Sabha; these were the non-negotiables of the Indian negotiation strategy, or what Ramesh termed the “contours of the flexibility” (Lok Sabha, 2009: 238-9). The first two “non-negotiables” were that India would not agree to any legally binding emission-reduction targets or to stipulating a year in which emissions would peak. The third was that only mitigation actions that were supported by international finance or technology would be subject to MRV;
domestically funded actions would be beyond international scrutiny (Lok Sabha, 2009). In addition Ramesh formally reiterated that India would reduce emissions intensity between 20% and 25%
between 2005 and 2020. During the Lok Sabha debate, Ramesh also highlighted the interplay of India’s improving material circumstances and the idea of India as an emergent power when he said,
“We are a developing country. We have global aspirations. We want to be recognised as a world power. But having global aspirations and assuming global responsibilities are two sides of the same coin” (Lok Sabha, 2009: 238). Ramesh exhorted parliament that India must show leadership to its own people for its own sake – a statement which could be interpreted as being in keeping with SD realists’ view that the global agenda and domestic action should be de-linked or with the SD Internationalists’ view that India should engage proactively with the international negotiations (see Table 3 above).
The contestation of world views publicly came to a head on the eve of the Copenhagen COP, when two longstanding negotiators delayed their departure to Copenhagen citing concerns over Ramesh’s public statements. Days after the Lok Sabha debate (see Figure 33 above), Ramesh had given an exclusive interview about the parliamentary debate and India’s negotiating position to the
Times of India, one of India’s most influential English-language daily newspapers. He claimed that he now had parliamentary support for some flexibility in the interpretation of the Indian strategy related to international scrutiny of unsupported domestic mitigation actions (Sethi, 2009b). He also reiterated his Lok Sabha argument that India’s position at the negotiations was a weak one because it had relied for too long on the argument “Our per capita is very low; your per capita is very high;
therefore we would not do anything”, which was an “accident of history” (Lok Sabha, 2009: 234) linked to India’s inability to control its population. This argument, in his words, had become “a sleeper of an argument” (Sethi, 2009b) because India could no longer “hide” behind the vast population that produced its low per capita emissions. Ramesh’s statement to this effect had been highly contentious during the Lok Sabha debate and was read as an attack on the per capita convergence principle.
Ramesh’s statements of the Indian position were construed by longstanding delegation member Chandrasekhar Dasgupta as unilateral concessions (the emissions-intensity reduction statement) and a “water[ing] down” of the PM’s positions on “per capita approach, position on technology transfer and IPR [Intellectual Property Rights], and our rejection of international verification or review of our domestically funded mitigation actions” (Times News Network, 2009b). Another senior delegate, Prodipto Ghosh, also expressed concerns with the apparent change of substantive negotiating positions and strategy and (temporarily) withdrew from the Indian delegation on the eve of the COP (Times News Network, 2009b). It was only after last-minute reassurances from Ramesh – not made public – that these negotiators left for Copenhagen (Times News Network, 2009b).
This period shows the influence of the international institutional arrangements – in the form of looming COPs – on India’s ideas, both nationally and internationally espoused. As discussed above, it was in the lead up to COP15 in particular that the domestic contestation between world views or ideas became prominent; it could be said that the looming COP catalysed debated and created some space for contending world views to come to the fore.
Even as India’s idea of itself as an emerging international power is fed by its improving material circumstances – high GDP growth rates and increased international economic integrations – it remains a developing country with hobbling development deficits in terms of lack of housing, sanitation, access to energy and clean water, etc. So while some Indian politicians have acknowledged that global aspirations come with global responsibilities, the political elite have been largely ineffectual in their domestic responsibilities of addressing the internal distributional inequalities.