The Hindu : Front Page : Eclipsed by London blasts, Gleneagles summit grapples with climate change

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Friday, Jul 08, 2005

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Eclipsed by London blasts, Gleneagles summit grapples with climate change

N. Ram

Plus 5 nations seek "greater voice" in U.N. decision-making

BLAIR VOWS TO FIGHT: U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair makes a statement on the series of bomb attacks in London on Thursday.

GLENEAGLES: The G-8 Summit at Gleneagles, and the coordinated as well as separate efforts of the five big developing countries, including India, invited to participate in the meeting, were clearly eclipsed by the terrible carnage, the human tragedy, wrought by the multiple and coordinated terrorist bomb explosions in central London.

Thursday dawned brilliantly bright but the mood at this idyllic golfing resort in Scotland darkened visibly as, coinciding with the opening of the G-8 (plus 5) Summit, confused information began to dribble in about a massive "power surge" creating havoc in the London underground. It had been reported somewhat breathlessly in the British media, already high on the ecstasy of snatching Olympics 2012 from the French (one tabloid evoked memories of Lord Nelson's 1805 victory at the Battle of Trafalgar), that Tony Blair had taken "personal charge" of intensive negotiations on Africa and climate changes, evidently in the face of much Bush administration obduracy.

``Two difficult subjects''

The British Prime Minister and his aspirant successor, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, had invested much political capital in these ventures and Mr. Blair was on record saying he had taken "a chance on this G8 choosing Africa and climate change ... you couldn't choose two more difficult subjects." With thousands of anti-Summit protesters on the march or lying in wait all round, security arrangements were extraordinary and Gleneagles resembled a fortress. Then calamity, long anticipated by British security experts, struck in the capital, forcing Mr. Blair to leave the Summit and return to London.

The British Prime Minister was hoping to get some movement within the G-8 towards a minimum common position on climate change, a nod to the "science of climate change," and some kind of decent formulation on human greenhouse gas emissions. Mr. Bush was reported to be prepared, in some unspecified way, to go along with the proposition that `climate change was happening,' with a post-Kyoto process that would make demands on the leading developing countries, including India and China; also to `accept that global warming was, to some extent, manmade.'

Mini-summit

Meanwhile, the governments of Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa held their mini-summit at Gleneagles and came up with an interesting enough Joint Declaration. It called for providing "a greater voice to developing countries in U.N. decision-making," promoting "multilateralism," enhancing North-South cooperation, and a renewed commitment to "sustainable development and the harnessing of the benefits of globalisation for all." Somewhat hearteningly, it reaffirmed "the role of South-South cooperation in the context of multilateralism" and committed the five large developing countries to "close coordination and cooperation to meet the challenges arising from globalisation, and to promote the common interest of developing countries by striving to more effectively bring together our priorities and international engagement strategies."

While the issues of mass hunger and poverty in the developing world at large did not get anything like the focus African poverty has got in the Summit and in the run-up to it, it raised trade issues connected with barriers to products and services of interest to developing countries and spotlighted the "fundamental requirement" of achieving "substantive progress, by the end of July 2005, regarding agricultural negotiations, access to non-agricultural markets, services, trade facilitation and rules." It demanded a reduction in "trade-distorting" domestic support for agriculture in developed countries, and an end to all forms of export subsidies by a date to be agreed.

On the gamut of issues relating to climate change, the Joint Declaration highlighted the key point that the international regime represented by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol rest on "the differentiation of obligations among Parties," according to "the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities of States," namely the developed as distinct from the developing countries. It will be tough sailing for the informally banded group of five in a world where the Bush administration, and like-minded developed country governments, refuse to accept any such dictum.

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