David Axelrod was simply trying to score political brownie points for his boss Barack Obama when he suggested that the US had extracted a major concession from China and India on international verification of their voluntary actions on climate change. Under fire for having achieved very little in his first year as President, Obama needs his team to project a better image, of a doer. Hence the spin on having won a victory over China. News reports from the summit though seemed to suggest that China repeatedly snubbed the US President until he finally barged in on a meeting of the BASICs. Funnily enough, his statement clearly meant for a domestic audience has irked the political class in India. The objection is a tired one, put into a new context. India, it is being claimed, has sacrificed its sovereignty by succumbing to US pressure on international monitoring and verification of its efforts. For one, this is not true. The Copenhagen Accord is as vague about international monitoring and verification as it is about emissions cuts and financing. Of course, all the issues remain on the table, but none has been cast in iron so far, and isn?t likely to be for at least another year.
But we would like to argue that the entire brouhaha about monitoring and sovereignty is nothing but a political gimmick. It is unreasonable to expect no international monitoring for projects, which are funded by money from abroad, or which use technology transferred from abroad, under the provisions of any final climate agreement. At least the government seems to have accepted this. But even on voluntary actions, we ought to have nothing to hide from anyone who wishes to cross-check. The background paper of the Planning Commission which formed the basis of our move to an emissions intensity of GDP criterion lays out our path to a 20-25% cut in emissions intensity by 2020 in no uncertain terms. We will, it seems, meet our voluntary targets in the course of normal technological change with no special effort. So why be defensive about it? Instead, we should use monitoring and verification as bargaining chips to extract more concessions from the West, especially in terms of emissions cuts. Instead of worrying about sovereignty, we should focus on ensuring that the international monitoring mechanism is neutral, credible and applicable to each country. On climate, we must stop being defensive now to extract a better deal for ourselves at the end. Having just sat at the highest table in Copenhagen (in a group of just five countries) which finally decided the outcome of Round 1 of climate talks, any talk of loss of sovereignty sounds completely hollow.
