One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward

So, President Bush managed to push the G-8 to more or less his position on the climate change. Is it time for us to celebrate? Can we breathe easy? Not yet. His proposals may represent an advance in the sense that at last the U.S. is also waking up to reality of the climate change, but only in this very limited sense. By making the proposals vague and devoid of firm commitments, the world has taken one step forward and two steps backward.

The first question that goes begging is: how is it that a nation that is leading advocate on binding performance evaluation criteria for foreign and domestic aid now wants to have non-binding “aspirations,” instead of clearly defined, measurable goals?

Recall that before USAID approves a dime in aid to an international NGO or a governmental agency, it asks for firm long-term goals and outcome evaluation criteria. Even more significantly, before the U.S. pays its dues to the United Nations under the U.N. charter and international treaties, it flaunts its power and flexes its muscle to ensure that the U.N. and each of its agencies draws up and furnishes to the U.S. Congress their strategic planning matrices with detailed performance indicators for evaluating the impact. It is claimed, and perhaps rightly, that if it cannot be measured, how do we know it worked? Therefore, any agency, especially an international one, before it receives any aid from U.S. has to agree to measurable goals that are considered satisfactory by the U.S. However, when it comes to global emission standards, the world’s largest polluter does not want any fixed goals. It does not want any sanctions or penalties for non-compliance. And it is incredible that the remaining industrial powers have also scaled back to this position.

Second, how can the U.S. shed its responsibilities for creating the mess in the first place? Despite being a home to less than 5% of world’s population, it contributes to over a quarter of world’s green house emissions? The U.S. and other industrialized countries took the lead in emitting the green house gases and there is no reason why they should not take a lead in checking. By no means do I intend to absolve the developing countries of their responsibilities in preventing further aggravation of the problem. After all, they stand to lose as much if not more from the climate change.

Development is not merely a matter of economic prosperity for the people. It is about quality of life. Rapidly degrading environment such as that India and China have is not in the interest of their own citizens. High levels of pollution, rapidly shrinking glaciers, disappearing forest cover, scarcity of waters, and growing number of natural disasters pose a serious threat to the very existence of these countries, which they ought to take a serious note of. If these countries manage to stall the progress of an agreement, I would be very disappointed for their citizens.

Granted that an equitable deal has to be worked out that accommodates the interests of all countries as far as possible, non-committal targets, however, are not the way to go. Firm performance targets in a climate change convention are a must for the environmental security of the planet. Don’t you agree?