New Delhi
10 December 2009
The small Polynesian island nation of Tuvalu broke ranks with the developing
countries at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen, forcing China,
India and Brazil to go into a huddle Thursday.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao separately called up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in a bid to forge a joint strategy in the face
of mounting pressure to accept newer carbon emission reduction targets.
Prime Minister Singh, whose Cabinet Thursday finalised the brief for India's position to
be adopted on the issue at Copenhagen, and Premier Wen are understood to have
agreed that India and China should keep in touch as the talks progress.
The Chinese Embassy here told this newspaper that the two leaders discussed ways to
"enhance coordination and cooperation to deal with climate change." Both Premier Wen
and Prime Minister Singh will attend the heads of state / government talks in
Copenhagen on December 17 and 18.
In terms of physical land size, at just 26 square kilometres, Tuvalu is the fourth smallest
country in the world, but its call for discussions on a "legally binding amendment" to the
1997 Kyoto Protocol has upset the delicate equilibrium in the G-77 bloc of developing
nations.
India, China and Brazil, which along with South Africa, are loosely grouped as the
"BASIC" countries.
Premier Wen's telephone call to Prime Minister Singh also followed a heated exchange
of words between the negotiators of China and the US at Copenhagen.
A legally binding amendment to the Kyoto Protocol would entail setting emission
reduction targets for developing countries such as India and China, which have insisted
that the burden of undertaking legally binding commitments fell on the developed world,
led by the United States.
Meanwhile, US Special Envoy Todd Stern said that the US is planning to join other
developed nations in giving aid to developing countries to deal with climate change, but
he dismissed the proposal that developed nations provide financial aid and technologies
to major emerging economies such as China and India.
Stern rejected the argument that the US owes the world "reparations" for carbon
emissions over the past decades. He said that the US recognises its historic role in
global warming, but he rejected any notion of guilt or reparation.
The US is not in debt to developing countries because the greenhouse effect is a
"relatively recent phenomenon," Stern said, and urged the major developing countries to
take on more carbon emission reduction plans in the negotiations.
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