One of the few specific commitments of the very unspecific Copenhagen accord was that rich countries would shell out $30 billion for a fast-start fund for climate mitigation by poorer countries by 2012, with an additional $100 billion coming through from 2020 onwards. At Cancun, the Indian environment minister called the failure to provide this funding his ?greatest disappointment?. Such support from rich countries has been recognised as key to bringing poorer countries on board for legally binding commitments. But despite the ?greatest disappointment?, Jairam Ramesh took a leadership role in trying to break the ongoing impasse between developed and developing or emerging economies, by saying India may eventually commit to legally binding cuts in emissions. No sooner had he said this than domestic voices cried foul, loudly decrying how the minister was compromising national sovereignty, disastrously departing from India?s historical strategy of insisting that rich countries must shell out costs for their historical responsibility. But the Ramesh shift echoes a real shift in global realities. Whatever developed countries may have been guilty of in the past, emerging economies are accumulating similar guilt today. Our carbon emissions are growing fast. Instead of obdurately holding out for ageing notions of ?common but differentiated responsibilities?, it is time to move the discussion forward. Neither India?s economic interests nor its foreign policy priorities are the same as they were 20 years ago. Ramesh is doing the right thing.
That the Cancun climate summit would be as unlikely to deliver a globally binding accord as the Copenhagen summit proved to be was known at its outset. The leaders of India, China and the US, for example, haven?t bothered to turn up this time around. The landscape has instead been dotted with lesser folk, the ministers, to whom the UN climate chief Christiana Figueres appealed, ?If you find your national position is in opposition to that of others, don?t ask for compromise, think of our common planet and offer the compromise first.? Few have been willing to step up to the task. Ramesh has, and without really compromising the Indian position. For, of course, India will accept a legally binding commitment only when the other big players do the same. But it just took the moral lead.