Wary neighbours unite over climate change

By: Rina Saeed Khan on December 12th, 2009

Pakistan and India may have many issues between them but when it comes to climate change, they hold closely-aligned positions. Here at the Copenhagen climate change conference, the two delegations are working closely together in the G-77 negotiating bloc, and in the recent divide in the G-77 they are actually on the same side.

The divide has been caused by island state Tuvalu’s insistence that deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are needed to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 1.5 degrees C instead of the more widely accepted two degrees. Tuvalu and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) say they will not be able to survive the rise in sea-level which will follow if temperatures warm by 2C or more.

India and China think their insistence is diverting attention from the present negotiations on the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol (the talks have now been suspended until G-77 sorts out its differences). Pakistan is siding with the Indian and Chinese position, although it will be hit hard by a 2C rise as well.

Its sea levels are rising already, particularly in the Indus Delta area, and the valley glaciers are melting and causing massive flooding. At the conference, however, Pakistan remains solidly behind China and India, who do not want any across-the-board caps on their emissions as that would affect their growth rates. “Our economies may be different, but our concerns are similar. We have the same stance at the negotiations”, said a member of the Pakistani delegation who is also a negotiator.

Both Pakistan and India are on the list of vulnerable countries that will suffer from climate change. In the recently published ‘Global Climate Risk Index 2010’ which reflected the most severely affected countries over almost two decades, India was ranked  at 7, while Pakistan came in at 27.

“We both have vulnerable communities and ecosystems and in the future will have to adopt low carbon strategies for our energy security”, said the Pakistani negotiator. “So really we have the same problems to address”. For now, however, their attention is focused on finding a solution to the current divide within the G-77 and on getting the negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol moving again.

Ali Sheikh, head of LEAD-Pakistan (a sustainable development NGO) and also a member of the Pakistani delegation, said: “The Tuvalu proposal is nerve-racking… For the small island states and African countries to some extent, no deal at Copenhagen is better than a bad deal. The G-77 is facing a challenge, but there are overlapping interests so let’s see what happens”.

The negotiators don’t have long to find a way out of this impasse as the ministers are due to arrive in a few days. “This issue has to be resolved soon. The ministers come to give their blessings, not to negotiate”, said Ali Sheikh.

Some sense that a conspiracy is afoot to split the G-77 and weaken its negotiating position. However, Shafqat Kakakhel, a veteran UN official who now works for the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Pakistan and is also a member of the Pakistani delegation, says: “The G-77 will never break up – only as a unified group can we make the Annex 1 (rich) countries listen to our demands”.