Over 190 governments had earlier agreed to take steps that will keep the average global temperature rise from the pre-industrial age within a two-degree Celsius. But actual pledges of individual countries to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases – mainly carbon dioxide, the main culprit in global warming – still fall collectively around 40 per cent short of what is required to stay within that two-degree limit. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has pointed this out before, and did so again on the eve of the Doha summit, adding to its old report new ways to close the emission reduction gap. As UNEP chief Achim Steiner said at the latest report release, ‘closing the gap is technologically feasible and financially viable. What is required is political will.’

Almost immediately, the World Bank released a prognosis of a world in 2100 AD if there is not enough political will right now. It talks about what will happen in a world that is, on the average, four degrees Celsius warmer than in the pre-Industrial Age. The overarching conclusion from all the doom and gloom scenarios: the earth will survive, after all it has gone through many far warmer periods in its past; but human civilisation as we know it will be at very serious risk.

As the annual summit of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) started in Doha, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) released its latest calculation of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. It is higher than at any point in the past since measurements started. If these very recent warnings were not enough, the International Energy Agency has earlier warned that the window of opportunity to move towards a low-carbon development path is closing rapidly. Experts have said that for a cost-effective transition, greenhouse gas emissions should peak by 2015 and start falling after 2020.

Despite all this, year after year, the UNFCCC summit fails to come up with any agreement that can combat climate change in any significant way. After days of finger pointing in a language that turns increasingly undiplomatic, representatives of over 190 governments manage to accept an agreement that just about keeps the UN process going. It is a by-now-stale drama where both developing and developed countries try to portray the ‘other’ side as villains. Developing countries have an advantage, because they can quite truthfully also portray themselves as victims of climate change. But the United States of America also does a very good job of endlessly repeating that any action by rich nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases – mainly carbon dioxide – that are causing climate change will not be effective unless big emitters like China and India do the same.

The US position ignores the fundamental issue of equity – the fact that relatively few people living in rich nations have taken up a disproportionately large percentage of the carbon space in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial age and continue to do so. Asking developing countries to arrest their greenhouse gas emissions now places a serious constraint on their effort to attain the same standard of living as in rich nations.

This issue was first highlighted by Indian NGOs and then by Indian policymakers as far back as 1992, when the Rio conventions were being discussed at the Earth Summit. The UNFCCC is one of the three Rio conventions, and its charter includes the notion of equity by saying countries will reduce their greenhouse gas emissions according to their ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.’

During the Earth Summit, the Indian media highlighted the issue of equity, and Indian negotiators at the annual climate summits have done so ever since. Current Minister of State for Environment and Forests (Independent Charge) Jayanthi Natarajan focussed on this during the 2011 climate summit in Durban, South Africa, and Indian negotiators did the same in Doha this year. Every time, this notion has received significant play in the Indian media.

The notion of equity – that every individual on this planet has got an equal right to the atmospheric carbon space – is unexceptional. It is also a very good negotiating tactic. Whenever rich countries point fingers at India for becoming the world’s third highest greenhouse gas emitter (after China and the US), Indian negotiators turn around and say India’s per capita emissions are still a very small fraction of what it is in developed countries. They also point out that well over 400 million Indians are still unconnected to the electricity grid, and nobody has any business asking them to stay in darkness for ever.

All this has got faithful play in the Indian media over the years. This is all very good, but it entails a risk that is becoming more obvious. The risk is that Indian policymakers start believing in the notion of equity to the point where any move towards a green economy gets a step-motherly treatment. There are more and more signs that this is happening. India has an ambitious National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), but it has moved little except in the area of energy efficiency, and the official in charge of that has now left the government. The Prime Minister’s Advisory Council on Climate Change that is supposed to oversee the working of the NAPCC has not met since January 2011. State electricity boards that are supposed to give a boost to renewable energy generation by buying it at specially enhanced rates are now jibbing at the cost, and nobody is taking them on. Banks are still asking for a higher interest rate to finance green energy projects than for other projects. The overall result is that entrepreneurs are shying away from the green economy, and there is a conspicuous lack of coverage of these issues in the Indian media.

The other conspicuous lack is coverage of actual climate change effects on the ground. A Member of Parliament from Odisha stood up in the Rajya Sabha and said that two coastal villages in his constituency had been wiped out due to storm surges higher than any seen before. No one from the national media went to find out how it happened or what happened to residents of those two villages. Throughout India’s semi-arid belt, farmers are complaining that monsoon rains are becoming more erratic, and they are finding it more and more difficult to plan their cropping. While there is extensive coverage of the monsoon onset date, there are few attempts to connect this erratic nature to climate change, though that was one of the main predictions of the 2007 report produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

When it comes to climate coverage, there is a clear divide in the Indian media. On one side there are the bog English-language media houses, most of whom have journalists who have been covering this issue, know what they are doing, and are doing it as best as possible. To this number one can add about half a dozen journalists doing the same in various Indian-language media houses. On the other side are the overwhelming majority of India-language media houses, whose editors say they do not have journalists capable of covering this issue, or interested in doing so. That is a pitifully short-sighted approach to a subject that threatens to become the biggest news item of this century.

Moving back to the international climate negotiations arena, the Indian media should be complimented for having picked up the one major new thing that came out of the Doha conference – ‘loss and damage’.

The combat against climate change started with the idea of mitigation – reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. That remains the bulk of the debate, but in the last five years or so many countries have realised that is not enough. As more and more climate change effects make themselves apparent, policymakers realise they have to learn how to adapt to this changing reality. This has brought adaptation to the international debate, and the need for rich countries to pay poor countries for this purpose. At the UNFCCC talks, it is still a debate led largely by developing countries, especially the most vulnerable among them – small islands and those facing the worst water shortages. Since no one can seriously debate the need for adaptation, developing countries have even pushed through the formation of an adaptation fund, though hardly any government has put any money into it, and no one seems likely to.

Now the world has reached the third stage, and that may become the lasting legacy of the Doha climate summit. If countries will not mitigate their emissions to the required level, and if they are unable to adapt to a changed climate, then they will suffer loss and damage. That is exactly what is happening, and the poorest of the countries are saying that they need money to deal with this loss and damage. NGOs have been at the forefront of pushing the idea at Doha through the Least Developed Countries group, the Africa group and the Association of Small Island States. Developed countries, especially the United States, have been bitterly opposed to inclusion of loss and damage in the multilateral negotiations, because they see it as the thin end of the wedge on compensation claims. But finally the developing country groups at least managed to push through the point that this will be discussed in future conferences.

To the credit of the Indian journalists covering the Doha summit, they were among the first to understand the importance of this issue and focus on it. This issue is bound to loom large in future negotiations, and there is hope that the Indian media spotlight will remain trained on it.  q