Has India made an unwarranted concession to the developed countries on the climate front?

The point of contention is paragraph 101 of the declaration issued at the end of the G-20 summit held on September 5-6 at St Petersburg, which supports taking a unified view of the Montreal Protocol and the Kyoto Protocol. India has, on earlier occasions, opposed clubbing of the two.

Paragraph 101 says: “We also support complementary initiatives… that include using the expertise and the institutions of the Montreal Protocol to phase down the production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), based on the examination of economically viable and technically feasible alternatives.

We will continue to include HFCs within the scope of…Kyoto Protocol for accounting and reporting emissions”.

Simply put, India and China will have to expedite the phase-out of certain CFC substitutes at the earliest, given their global warming potential, by opting for alternatives that the Western chemicals industry has lined up for them.

There has been an attempt to advance the phase-out deadline.

The Montreal Protocol (1987) sought to phase out certain ozone-depleting chemicals called halocarbons that were in use in domestic, commercial and industrial applications.

Of these, a particular group called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used widely in refrigeration, air-conditioning, manufacture of synthetic foams and as industrial solvents, was to be replaced in two stages — first by the readily available, ozone-friendly hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and later by HFCs. While developed countries took steps to phase out the production and consumption of CFCs by the mid 1990s, developing countries were assisted monetarily by the Global Environmental Facility of the World Bank and by the Multilateral Fund (MLF) set up under the Montreal Protocol to effect the phase-out in the timeframe of 2000-2010.

THE SWITCHOVER

The major beneficiaries of assistance were China and India. Progress under the protocol was so smooth that it was hailed as the most successful global compact in recent times.

The switchover involving a transition to HCFCs and then to HFCs, however, threw up some challenges.

First, HCFCs were found to have a not insignificant global warming potential (GWP).

Second, the HFCs which were supposed to substitute HCFCs were found to have even higher GWPs. Hence, both groups of chemicals were considered undesirable for use from the climate point of view.

Third, the production of HCFC-22, widely used in refrigeration and air-conditioning, released a gas called HFC-23 as a by-product. This by-product had an unacceptably high global warming propensity and, therefore, had to be destroyed.

For this reason, assistance to projects to set up HCFC-22 production facilities was extended to set up HFC-23 destruction facilities as well. This put an additional burden on the resources of the Multilateral Fund.

All this led to a two-pronged approach to deal with the substitute chemicals. One, production and consumption of these chemicals were sought to be phased down under the Montreal Protocol with the process beginning in 2015 and being completed by 2030 in developed countries, and by 2040 in developing countries (Copenhagen, 1992).

Two, HFCs were brought under the Kyoto Protocol (1997) for progressive reduction of emissions in developed countries, as they were in substantial use there.

Though the Kyoto Protocol does not apply to developing countries, it confers on them the benefit of generating marketable credits for any measures taken by them to cut down HFC emissions, such as destruction of these chemicals.

AN ADVANTAGEOUS

So, in effect, in addition to receiving monetary assistance for production of HFC-23 as a by-product with no application value and for its destruction, China and India became entitled to generate revenues through marketing the carbon credits — it was a winner-take-all situation.

Later, in 2007, the total phase-out of HCFCs (not HFCs) was advanced to 2030 in developing countries as well. The use of HFCs, however, was left untouched: their use was permissible till 2040. To comply with the new HCFC phase-out requirement, India prepared a HCFC management plan in 2011 and submitted it to the executive committee of the Montreal Protocol.

The plan was approved with assistance to the tune of $5,70,000. It was drawn up under the assumption that the use of HFCs would continue till 2040, though in a gradually falling manner.

THE TIDE TURNED

Meanwhile, in 2009, came the observation of the Technology and Economics Assessment Panel (TEAP) of the Montreal Protocol.

It said that within the next 10 years global warming HFC emissions would increase manifold and by 2050 would threaten to negate the impact of other measures taken to contain warming.

This increase was projected to take place mostly in developing countries, notably China.

It was claimed that low ozone-depleting and low global-warming substitutes for HFCs had become available and this would make an accelerated phase-out of both HCFCs and HFCs possible.

As a result, an amendment to the schedules decided earlier for these chemicals was tabled by the European Union in February 2011.

This amendment sought to effect a total phase-out of both these groups of chemicals by 2020 itself in place of the earlier agreed 2030 and 2040 deadlines.

China and India quickly opposed this move. In 2011, in a paper titled ‘India’s Perspective on Phase Down of Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) under the ambit of Vienna Convention and its Montreal Protocol’, India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) argued that “the proposed amendments have a number of legal, policy and technical aspects which needs [need] to be looked into carefully”.

The paper went on to assert that “there are no technically viable and environmentally benign alternatives to HFCs”.

China and India have pressed the argument that the Montreal Protocol and the UNFCCC with its adjunct, the Kyoto Protocol, have different objectives.

The former seeks to protect the earth from ozone layer depletion and cannot be stretched to deal with the subject of global warming.

It is alleged that the move to accelerate HFCs phase-out is driven by the Western chemical industry and also by a desire to cut down multilateral assistance to China and India.

One can understand the eagerness of the developed countries to make the developing countries commit themselves to an accelerated phase-out of HCFCs and HFCs.

In recent months, the chief US negotiator to the climate talks, Todd Stern, has been demanding a discussion on this issue.

The G-20 Summit in St Petersburg offered a forum to do so with the advantage that things agreed upon at the summit would be difficult to go back on later.

Overlooking the craftiness behind the move, it has to be conceded that there is a strong synergy between different global green compacts.

Pleading to the contrary would alienate India. These could have been behind India not objecting to the inclusion of paragraph 101 in the declaration.

(The author is former Secretary to the Government of India, Ministry of Environment and Forests.)

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