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Forecast for Thimpu
APR 22 -
Yet another photo op for South Asian leaders. Simmering tensions between India and Pakistan mean all eyes will again be on the government heads of the quarrelsome neighbours. Will they meet each other’s eye or will it be eyeball to eyeball rather? Is it going to be the same rudderless ritual at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Thimpu next week?
The main agenda of the meet — climate change — is something that has brought about changes in other regional politics. But will it make the SAARC talk-shop walk the talk? Before jumping to any conclusion, I spoke to a few experts in the region.
Chairman of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change Rajendra Pachauri has observed both SAARC and international climate negotiations for many years now. He remembers the time when the first global environment summit took place in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and how South Asian nations were upbeat about the regional approach then.
“Before the Rio summit in 1992, the Energy Research Institute (which Pachauri heads) was requested by the Pakistan and Sri Lanka governments to give a briefing to the delegations that were going there. I think at that stage the spirit was very strong that we have to work together on global as well as regional environmental issues. And then again, a couple of years later, there was another such consultation; but I am afraid the momentum was not maintained.”
Pachauri, however, believes SAARC can regain the momentum at least on the issue of climate change.
“This is the first time you have a SAARC summit where you have the leaders of the countries in the region getting together on a very specific subject, so I would like to be optimistic that they can find some areas where cooperation will bring benefits for all of them.”
Ainun Nishat, climate chief of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) in Bangladesh, too is optimistic. He says there have been some preparations to bring out a joint communiqué, and that there are some encouraging signals.
“In Bangladesh, policy makers are discussing climate change with civil society, and I understand it is happening in other countries of the region in the run-up to the summit.
“I believe frequent contact between the leaders is essentially the first step that will lead to some concrete action because they always want to show progress and advancement, that is their compulsion.”
True, except that such progress and advancement have only been in the papers that SAARC has churned out innumerably over the years. A cursory look at its communiqués, declarations and statements explains it all.
“There is already an action plan which was adopted in Dhaka at the SAARC climate change ministers conference in July 2008. They have endorsed the action plan again, and they have also agreed to work on the SAARC environment treaty which is also progressing,” wrote the regional bloc’s secretary general Sheel Kant Sharma last month.
We don’t know what difference the action plan has made while we see that the region’s millions of people still suffer from pressing problems like lack of regional flood forecasting, thanks to non-cooperation, mainly by the major players. As per the environment treaty, there have been talks here and there.
SAARC secretariat officials hope the treaty will be one of the outcomes of the summit, but they have no idea of the specifics of the proposals to be discussed. There has hardly been any serious meeting or workshop on it. Is that how a multilateral treaty is prepared?
If yes, it will no doubt end up as one of those SAARC documents destined to be shelved. What else do you expect when member countries have so varied interests in the world of climate negotiations? Three of them — India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — are developing countries while the rest are least developed ones.
Among the developing nations, fast emerging economy India has a completely different interest: a global treaty on climate change that requires developed countries to mandatorily cut emissions and exempts it from doing so. While the other developing countries and the least developed ones are for a global climate treaty with or without such an exemption for fast developing countries like India and China.
And even among the least developed countries, the Maldives gets along better with the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS), and Bangladesh insists that it is the most vulnerable state.
“SAARC is not a particularly useful international negotiating group because they don’t have a common position on international climate negotiations,” says Saleemul Haq, an expert with the International Institute for Environment and Development that has helped developing worlds on climate issues. “It has failed to be effective in such international negotiations.”
The Copenhagen summit was a telling testimony to that as India jettisoned its regional alliances and other members of the G77 and went to dance arm in arm with the US to bring out a controversial accord. Even more bizarre was the aftermath of the Copenhagen collapse, when the UN asked member countries to send their response to the accord. India refused to fully endorse the same agreement as it realised, although a bit too late, the American game plan to bypass the UN climate regime. While the Americans got Nepal, to cite one example, to okay the accord under tacit pressure.
That would never have happened if SAARC meant anything. And now even with climate change as the main agenda at its upcoming summit, things don’t look set to change.
navin.khadka@gmail.com
Posted on: 2010-04-23 08:14
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