The rising tide

The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting,or CHOGM,is usually a sleepy affair. Queen Elizabeth II,the bodys figurehead,gives a speech,a pariah state is expelled or one thats finally held elections is welcomed back to the fold. But this instalment,in Trinidad in the West Indies,has become the centre of attention. The last meeting of a major grouping of nations before the Copenhagen climate change summit gets underway,CHOGM was effectively taken over by climate change. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon,French President Nicholas Sarkozy,and Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen,the host of the December summit,all turned up,hoping that something substantive would be agreed upon; something that would build upon recent moves by China and the United States to go to Copenhagen with something substantive to put on the table.

In the end,something was indeed agreed upon: a $10 billion plan that will help small island nations,like Mauritius,respond to the threat of rising sea levels. These are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change,and the least able to finance adaptation to those effects. About half the Commonwealth consists of such states,so getting agreement is a good sign that something about adaptation might well be achieved at Copenhagen. But other sticking points continued. In a speech that was sharply worded,Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that it was unfortunate that climate change negotiations had become enmeshed with threats about trade measures. He moderated that tone by elsewhere in his speech assuring his listeners that India will sign on to an ambitious global target for emissions,if the burden is shared equitably.

That latter does not mark an enormous departure for the Indian position. But the Indian insistence that Copenhagen not be pre-empted in other words,that the architecture of a final agreement not be understood beforehand and that nobody should give up on a final,binding agreement at that summit,sets it apart from many other major economies. While the latter is an optimistic view that many should take,the former might be more short-sighted. All major economies are going to Copenhagen with numbers on the table,and with a sense of where their negotiating position starts. India has demonstrated its commitment to climate change already. It must go the last mile,and properly quantify that commitment. The environment minister,who spent the weekend chasing a chimera of old-style Us-vs-Them solidarity in Beijing when China and Brazil have already jumped ship,should be instructed by the cabinet to come up with the best estimates of Indias emissions targets before the governments negotiators leave for Copenhagen.