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India and China to be together in Copenhagen
23 October 2009
A GOVERNMENT of India press statement expressed optimism that the agreement would strengthen the activities between China and India on mitigation, programmes, projects, technology development and demonstration relating to greenhouse gas emission reduction, including energy conservation efficiency, renewable energies, clean coal, methane recovery and utilization, afforestation and sustainable management of forests and ecosystems, transportation and sustainable habitat.
But on the other hand, everyone in India is talking about a battle, if not a war, against China as the mainstream media, both print and visual, was full of news narrating the possibility of a frontline clash between the two populous countries.
For records, India has the burning boundary issue with China to resolve. It was sole reason that tempted the Chinese Army to intrude into Assam in Northeast India during 1962. Beijing even today believes that around 90,000 square kilometers of Arunachal Pradesh is a part of south Tibet and hence it belongs to China. And hence, the People’s Republic of China makes it a habit to expresses its unhappiness on every visit of the Indian President or the Prime Minister to Arunachal.
Compared to India, China has more neighbouring nations and amazingly the country has maintained cordial relationship with all the countries including Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Mongolia, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Burma (except India). The tension with India started in 1958 and finally culminated in a full scale war in 1962. The post war relationship between China and India continued with some mistrust, even though the Indian Union government heads including Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao, A.B. Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh continued peace initiatives (which might have narrowed the differences to some extend) during their respective reigns.
The new headache for Beijing came with the news that the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama is visiting Tawang of Arunachal Pradesh in November. Dalai Lama, who is running a Tibet government in exile at Dharamshala in north India, since he fled from his homeland in 1959, is scheduled to visit the Arunachal State capital
Itanagar and also Tawang. The spiritual leader considers Tawang, which houses the centuries old Tibetan Buddhist monastery, belongs to India.
It is understandable that China remains worried over the Tibet issue as its capital Lhasa witnessed an uprising in 2008 just before the Beijing Olympics. The recent unrest in Xinjiang province created by the Islamic Uighurs, which claimed hundreds of lives, added to the anxieties of Beijing. The growing strategic partnership between New Delhi and Washington is also a matter of concern for the Chinese.
China is not happy with the scheduled visit of Dalai Lama to Tawang. "We firmly oppose Dalai Lama visiting the so-called 'Arunachal Pradesh'," said Jiang Yu, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson. Quoting the Chinese spokesperson, the government controlled news agency Xinhua reported that Beijing was also annoyed with a section of
Indian media’s reporting with ‘inaccurate information’ on Indo-China border areas. Jiang Yu even appealed to the media ‘to be conducive towards promoting mutual understanding between the two neighbouring countries’.
The excessive Indian media debate even compelled New Delhi to make clarifications on border disturbances. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh disclosed that ‘there was no major change in the border situation’ and India’s Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao also claimed that ‘there was no significant increase in the number of incursions by China across all the sectors’. Ms Rao, a former ambassador to China, clarified that leaderships of both the countries were in regular touch
over important bilateral issues and both New Delhi and Beijing were keen to maintain peace and tranquility along the border. Amazingly, today India is one of China's largest trading partners, where the bilateral trade between the two fastest growing economies increased to the volume of over USD 50 billion in the last fiscal year (expected to reach over USD 60 billion by 2010). Even though, New Delhi and Beijing have to resolve many environmental (more precisely water) issues bilaterally, India’s Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh expresses firmly that both the countries decided to work out a common strategy on the climate change issues.
The minister, who visited China in August, stated officially that India considers China an important ally in the Copenhagen negotiations. Both the countries had decided to oppose any legally-binding emissions reduction targets during the UN climate change summit to be held in Copenhagen.
The Denmark capital will host the most important climate summit during December 7 to 18, where the government heads, environment ministers and other responsible officials representing 192 countries are supposed to take part. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is expected to adopt a climate treaty, which will replace the Kyoto protocol, which was signed in 1997 and is expiring in 2012.
"The objective of the summit in Copenhagen will be to formulate a new and striving global agreement on climate change that includes all countries of the world and also the ambitious target for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions," said a Danish diplomat Einar Hebogaard Jensen.
The Danish Ambassador to Bangladesh, Jensen, while speaking to this writer recently explained, "Denmark will listen carefully to all parties and mediate in the process towards a final agreement. You will find Denmark in a more facilitating role. We will look for overlapping positions and identify where common ground is emerging. From national initiator we will move to be an international mediator. Our aim is to
ensure transparency and openness."
The UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon expressed optimism about the Copenhagen summit saying, "We have a chance to put in place a climate change agreement that all nations can embrace, which will be equitable, balanced, comprehensible.” He however did not forget to caution, "Failure to reach broad agreement in Copenhagen would be morally inexcusable, economically shortsighted and politically unwise.”
Speaking to this writer recently in Dhaka, Festus Luboyera, the programme officer of UNFCCC said, "Copenhagen would be the culmination of a negotiation process that was launched in 2007 in Bali the year the scientific community sounded the alarm bells and declared that climate change is unequivocal - will have serious impacts and can be tackled at reasonable cost.”
Luboyera also added, "It has to be absolutely clear what developing countries will do to limit the growth of their emissions because without that indication, we will not get the ratification in many industrialised countries.”
Environmental scientists reveal that it would be essential to cut 80 per cent emissions by the developed (industrialized) countries by 2050 for the safety of the planet. The 9 billion people, who would live in 2050 on Earth, must not produce more than 2 tonnes of greenhouse gases per head per year. If the rise of global average temperature to be restricted within 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), the human race has to reach the goal of reducing emissions to 20 gigatonnes greenhouse gases by this period.
At this moment, an American citizen in average produces almost 24 tonnes greenhouse gases per year. The statistics is equal to 10 to 12 tonnes for those living in European countries. Similarly a Chinese on anaverage emits around 6 tonnes of greenhouse gases per year (China heavily depends on coal for its major electricity needs that paves for generating huge carbon in the air). Beijing of course declared that it was increasing the country’s forest cover (as to work as the carbon absorber) and also working affectively for the use of renewable power. India is however recognized as a low per capita carbon emitter in the globe. An Indian in average emits less than 2 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per annum. Even India’s per capita emission in the next 20 years is estimated to be within 4 tonnes. At the same time, India has been promoting tree planting, increasing its forest cover by millions of hectares in the last few decades. New Delhi has also planned to generate clean electricity from sunlight
and wind power.
Even though, India has joined hands with China to call for a greater commitment from the western (industrialized) countries on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Both New Delhi and Beijing also raised their voices for the interest of the developing countries such that they can demand the clean technologies to be borne by the developed nations. In fact, the two rapidly growing Asian economies can emerge as keynegotiators in the Copenhagen conference.
“We expect a fair and equitable agreement at Copenhagen,” the Environment Minister Ramesh argued, adding that in India the climate change is not just an environmental topic, but a development issue too. What is significant, the young and articulate minister declared during a recent media briefing in New Delhi that both India and China had ‘agreed to snub attempts by the western nations to play one against the other’.