Silence of the poor

The year 2015 has come to an end. This year has been full of events that are interconnected and foretell our future in a way that should enormously worry us. And, hopefully, get us all to rise to the challenge.

In December, the Paris climate change talks ended with an agreement far from ambitious and way off from being equitable. It has left the world even more vulnerable; the poor, even more deprived of basic human development.

Then there was the Chennai anomaly. Usually dry and desperately water-scarce, the city sank under water. What a way for citizens to realise, of this and every other megacity, of what an increasingly climate-risky world we are all living in. What a way to understand that. If we keep mismanaging, extreme weather events are going to make us all go under.

Then my city of Delhi, choked and spluttered, had run out of clean air to breathe. It has learnt the really hard way that it must find leapfrog options, combining both technology and lifestyle choices of mobility patterns, if it wants to live on something as basic as breathable air.

2015 has brought home tough messages. One, environmental issues cannot be ignored if we want to secure life and health. Two, development has to take a different path, for we must—starting now—mitigate its visibly adverse impacts. Three, since we live in a planet where warming is now unleashed, unbridled, what we do must be done at an extraordinary speed. 2015 has done all of us a huge favour: it has been a tea-leaf reading of our future. Dire warnings we must heed. But are we?

Let’s take the Paris Agreement as a symptom. The world today is hurtling towards two catastrophes, one caused by our need for economic growth, and the other by unparalleled and gluttonous consumption that impels emissions into the atmosphere. These greenhouse gas emissions, primarily emitted because we need energy, contain portends of a future being placed at extreme risk. We already see how weather variation—linked to climate change, or not—has jeopardised the livelihoods of millions of farmers in India in 2015.

Farmers are now driven to ultimate desperation— suicide. These failures, a combination of poor policies, are now exacerbated by untimely, weird weather, and have caused so much human pain.

In this manner, the development dividend, which is so hard to secure in the first place, is being lost. And there is much more to come. Paris, with its weak and unambitious text, has failed us abjectly. The already-rich and the becoming-rich have signalled they don’t want to compromise on their growth, or consumption, in the interests of the rest.

Another catastrophe awaits us— living in a more inequitable, insecure, and intolerant world. Let’s be clear. The Paris Agreement tells us, more than ever, that the rich world has bubble-wrapped itself, and believes that nobody can prick it or burst through.

To be secure in the bubble, conversation is restricted to only what is more convenient. In this age of internet-enabled information, ironically, the world is actually reading and being sensitive to less, not more. The circles of information have shrunk, to what is most agreeable to listen to. It is no surprise, then, that in climate change negotiations—in trade talks, too, or international relations—there is one dominant discourse.

The most powerful nations would like to believe that there is nobody on the other side. As I wrote from Paris, there was no longer another side. So, there is no respect for another’s position. It is believed the other side is either a terrorist, a communist or is just corrupt and incompetent. There is a fatal refusal to fathom, or approach, opinions or realities that are different.

In all this, there is growing inequality in the world. No amount of growth and economic prosperity is enough any more, because aspiration is the new God. This means anybody who is poor is marginalised simply because they have just not made the grade. There is no longer space for such “failure” in our brave, newer, world. It is about the survival of the fittest, in a way that would have made Darwin insane.

It is no surprise that we, in India, are mirroring this grave, new world. In the last year, the very real plight of the poor, distressed, flooded, drought-stricken and famished was banished from our television screens and newspaper articles. Our world is being cleansed. If we do not know they exist, we do not need to worry about their present or future.

We can think about a way of life that benefits us, solely. This is the true emerging face of intolerance in an intolerably unequal world.

This does not make for a secure future. No. It makes for a bloody war. But that is what we have to change, now and forever. I haven’t lost hope. Please don’t as well. Happy 2016.

Delhi must tighten the noose around all pollution sources. There is no other way

The year 2015 came to a close with new energy driving air pollution control measures in Delhi. On December 16, the Supreme Court ordered that no one in the National Capital Region (NCR) can buy a luxury diesel car or suv with engines bigger than 2000 cc. Trucks entering the capital will have to pay double the amount of environment compensation charge and trucks more than 10 years old cannot even enter the city. All taxis in NCR will have to switch to compressed natural gas (CNG), while all state governments in NCR will have to curb pollution from trash-burning and suspended dust from roads.

Meanwhile, under pressure to shake off the notorious tag of “gas chamber” that Delhi has earned, the state government has introduced the odd-even number formula on a trial basis. During the first fortnight of January, residents can ply their cars every alternate day depending on whether their registered car number is odd or even. The strategy is to remove at least 50 per cent of personal vehicles from the city roads. The Delhi government has also proposed to shut the coal-based power plants in Badarpur and Rajghat during winter.

These are desperate times that need desperate measures. The alarming pollution levels in Delhi call for a war on pollution, and the Supreme Court has just cracked the whip.

Most of these directives are from the bench headed by the Chief Justice of India, Justice T S Thakur, to check the public health emergency in the city. To facilitate the implementation of the Supreme Court’s order, the Environmental Pollution Control Authority has issued directives to stop the registration of diesel buses and autorickshaws in NCR.

More orders are expected on emissions standards for vehicles and pollution from power plants. The Supreme Court order brings the entire NCR under the ambit of action. Delhi’s effort can create a template for clean air for other cities too. Air pollution today is a national crisis and the fifth-largest killer in the country, according to estimates of the Global Burden of Disease, 2012, a report of the World Health Organization

Why Delhi needs urgent action

Air pollution in the country’s capital has remained consistently high, despite a mixed trend over the years. About 15 years ago several measures were implemented under the direction of the Supreme Court. These included improved emission standards, public transport strategy on CNG, capping the age of commercial vehicles, improved vehicle inspection programmes, relocation of polluting industries and action on power plant pollution. These steps reduced the annual average PM10 (particulate matter less than 10 microns) levels in the city by about 16 per cent between 2002 and 2007. But after 2007 only a few steps were taken—expansion of Delhi Metro, moderate increase in bus numbers, Bharat Stage IV emissions standards for vehicles and a small network of cycle tracks and footpaths around Commonwealth Games venues. This was too little too late.

Particulate levels, the key target of policy action, increased dramatically by 98 per cent between 2007 and 2014 (see ‘Decline and rise of particulate matter,’). In 2014, the annual average ambient PM10 levels reached five times the Indian standard of 60 microgramme per cubic metre. On the other hand, PM2.5, the tiny particles less than 2.5 microns that go deep inside the lungs, have shown consistently high annual average levels since 2011 and is at least four times the standard (see ‘Trend in PM2.5 levels’,). Between 2002 and 2014, the levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the city also increased by 55 per cent.

Ozone levels during a large number of days in the summer months in Delhi violate the standards. The city is in the grip of a multi-pollutant crisis. One can also witness a deadly blanket of winter pollution when the wind remains calm, cool and trapped close to the ground. Almost throughout the winter months of 2015, levels of PM2.5 reached up to four to seven times the standard (see ‘PM2.5 levels during the winter of 2015’, p30). On days when smog is high, PM2.5 rises even higher. When the national air quality index was applied to daily air quality monitored by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), it was found that while in the month of October about three per cent of the days were in the “severe” category, the worst category according to the index, by November, 63 per cent of the days were in that category. This is extremely dangerous for people suffering from respiratory and cardiac problems and also for children and the elderly.

Several studies in Delhi provide local evidences on damaging health impacts of air pollution.

An epidemiological study on children in the city carried out by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute of Kolkata threw up scary results. The study, published in 2012, found that every third child in Delhi has reduced lung function. Sputum of children was found to contain four times more iron-laden macrophages than those from cleaner environs. The levels of these biomarkers in children were found to be higher in areas with high PM10 levels.

Global scientific studies as well as those from cities of India have associated air pollution with a number of health problems, including respiratory and cardiac problems, stroke, cancer, hypertension, diabetes and effect on the brain and foetus. Even though Delhi has taken steps to generate real-time data to track air quality, it is yet to issue public health alerts and advisories to help people take precautions. In many global cities, the pollution levels as recorded in Delhi would have been declared as pollution emergencies.

Nevertheless, in what can be called a beginning, air pollution and health evidences have spurred official and court action in the city.

Too many polluters

Delhi can meet its clean air targets if it cuts emissions from multiple sources of air pollution in the city—vehicles, industry, power plants, open trash burning, construction and suspended dust from roads, among others. The most recent and detailed study of all pollution sources in Delhi has been carried out by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. The study was commissioned by the Delhi government and was discussed in the Supreme Court hearing.

According to the draft report of the study, the top four PM2.5 sources include road dust (36 per cent), vehicles (20 per cent), domestic fuel burning (12 per cent) and industrial point sources (11 per cent) (see ‘Sources of PM2.5 emissions’,). Similarly, the top four NOx emitters are industrial stacks including power plants (52 per cent), vehicles (36 per cent), diesel generator sets (six per cent) and domestic sources (three per cent) (see ‘Sources of nitrogen oxide emissions’,).

The relative position of the pollution sources changes through the summer and winter seasons. During winter, vehicles cause 25 per cent of the PM2.5 problem; biomass 26 per cent and trash-burning eight per cent. The increased concentration of particulate matter from the end of October to November is also due to the effect of crop burning in neighbouring states like Punjab and Haryana. But in summer, coal and flyash contribute the maximum to air pollution (26 per cent), followed by soil and road dust (27 per cent), biomass burning (12 per cent), vehicles (nine per cent) and trash-burning (seven per cent).

The IIT study also estimated, for the first time in Delhi, secondary particles—gases in the air that form particles by reacting with each other in the air and add to PM2.5. NOx turns into nitrate particles and sulphur dioxide into sulphate particles. These can be as high as 30 per cent of PM2.5 in winter and 15 per cent of PM2.5 in summer. This also shows that combustion sources such as vehicles, industrial and power sources are much bigger culprits than dust as their gases further increase the overall particulate load. The study also found very high pollution in towns in the NCR region, including Noida, Faridabad and Ghaziabad that are usually not well monitored by the official monitoring agencies.

The message is clear. Urgent action in the short and medium term is needed on all key pollution sources across NCR to improve the quality of air in the airshed. The first ever draft report on air pollution and health prepared by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has underscored the importance of reducing exposures from pollution sources close to people. As urgent steps, decisions have been taken in Delhi to cut down toxic diesel emissions from trucks and big diesel cars and also close Delhi’s two most polluting coal-based power plants during winter. More decisions are to follow.

Cracking the whip on diesel

The crackdown on diesel emissions from cars and trucks has caught the automobile industry on the wrong foot. Soon after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) stopped the registration of diesel cars in Delhi until January 6 and the Supreme Court ordered a ban on luxury diesel cars and SUVs in NCR, the automobile industry played the number game to prove that vehicles, especially diesel ones, are not the problem. The auto industry claims that diesel car numbers in the city are very small—only seven per cent of the total vehicles—and therefore of no consequence. Vehicles overall are much less dangerous than road dust, say automobile honchos.

This stand is clearly challenged by the IIT study, which found that diesel vehicles, which comprise a quarter of the vehicle fleet, contribute to a large share of vehicular PM2.5 emissions in different parts of Delhi. Except in Rohini, where diesel cars contribute 20 per cent of PM2.5, diesel’s share is as high as 70-90 per cent in Okhla, Vasant Kunj and Dilshad Garden and about 60 per cent in Pusa and Dwarka (see ‘Contribution of fuels in vehicular pollution’,). Overall, all vehicles are the biggest emitters of pollution among combustion sources.

Industry can no longer be in a denial mode. Diesel cars are legally allowed to emit three times more NOx and seven times more particulate matter than petrol cars. These pollutants are rising in Delhi and many other cities. Adding one diesel car is equivalent to adding three to seven petrol cars on the roads. The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified diesel emissions as class I carcinogen—putting it in the same class as tobacco smoking—for strong links with lung cancer. Curbing dieselisation has to be a priority. The diesel car market, by shifting to bigger cars, is adding to toxic pollution. While the bulk of petrol car sales (87 per cent) in the country sold in 2012 were below 1200 cc engine capacity, more than 40 per cent diesel cars were above 1500 cc.

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, while giving his verdict, established an important principal: rich car owners cannot misuse low-tax diesel for luxury consumption at the cost of public health.

Stronger action on trucks have also become necessary as the heavy duty vehicle industry has not yet moved to Bharat Stage IV standards that are the current standards in Delhi. The Centre will have to introduce Bharat Stage IV nationwide urgently to reduce truck emissions by 80 per cent and also leapfrog to Euro VI directly in 2020 to cut public health risk from all vehicles drastically. The government should also equalise the emissions standards of petrol and diesel cars.

Poisonous power plants

Cars are not the only problem leading to Delhi’s dirty air. Its thermal power sector, comprising two coal-based and four gas-based plants, is responsible for approximately 10 per cent of the city’s air pollution. To counter this, the Delhi government on December 4, 2015, ordered the closure of the fuel-guzzling, coal-fired power plants in Badarpur and Rajghat. This approach is in line with WHO’s proposals in its 2014 global report to improve urban air quality. The report had ranked Delhi’s air as the world’s dirtiest. Beijing has adopted similar steps, with authorities announcing in 2013 that coal-fired power plants in the country would be converted to natural gas.

While the Rajghat power plant in Delhi is temporarily shut, the one in Badarpur, which is run by the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), remains operational despite ongoing public criticism and orders from NGT to control its emissions.

NTPC Badarpur is one of India’s oldest plants and has an installed capacity of 705 megawatt (MW). DPCC has repeatedly criticised it for not complying with the applicable particulate matter emission norms of 50 microgram per normal cubic metre (mg/Nm3). Since 2011, DPCC has issued several directives to NTPC Badarpur to control its emissions. But its efforts “have resulted in no meaningful action”, which compelled DPCC to issue the show-cause notice for the plant’s closure. Badarpur arguably does not even comply with the more general norm of 150 mg/Nm3. During various site visits by the Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a thick and sooty plume of smoke was consistently observed from the plant’s stacks, strongly indicating that its emissions are higher than even this loose norm. CSE’s study of Badarpur’s emissions between April 2014 and March 2015 indicates that the plant was responsible for 78-89 per cent of emissions from the entire thermal power sector (see ‘Lion’s share of emissions’).

The conventional logic that coal is a cheap source of power does not apply to Badarpur. The plant is generating power at Rs 6.04 per unit. NTPC Badarpur has submitted a tariff petition to the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission seeking permission to invest a whopping Rs 741 crore towards the plant’s renovation and modernisation that would drive the costs even higher. Understandably, Delhi’s distribution companies have been strongly advocating its closure.

One argument put forward in NTPC Badarpur’s defence is that the plant is the only stable source of supply to certain areas of south Delhi, with a direct connection to the Sarita Vihar, Okhla and Mehrauli substations. CSE, however, believes that it is possible to shut down the plant, at least during winter, when air pollution is at its worst, without compromising on power supply. At a stakeholders meeting convened by Delhi’s power secretary Sukesh Jain in November 2015, the State Load Despatch Centre projected the winter peak at 515 MW for Sarita Vihar, Okhla and Mehrauli, thereby necessitating generation from the Badarpur plant. Distribution companies in Delhi echoed CSE and responded that NTPC Badarpur is not essential during winter. Indeed, more power could be sourced from the 330 MW Pragati I and 270 MW Indraprastha gas-based plants, both of which are significantly less polluting, and by drawing additional power through the Bamnauli line.

Alternatives to Badarpur powerhouse

The Delhi government can take a few other measures to ensure that the Badarpur plant operates at the lowest possible load throughout the year. The existing capacity of the Ballabgarh-Badarpur Double-Circuit line providing an alternate source of supply to Badarpur is currently constrained since it has reached the end of its life. Its existing capacity could be substantially increased by installing high-capacity High Temperature and Low Sag conductors.

Delhi Transco Limited (DTL) has planned a double circuit power line between Sarita Vihar and Pragati I, which was meant to become operational by March 2015. This line would provide an additional 400 MW of power supply to south Delhi, significantly reducing the load at the Badarpur plant for the rest of the year. Sarada Routray, a manager at DTL, assures CSE that “Badarpur can certainly be shut down in winter once the first phase of this line becomes operational in March 2016”.

The government should also expedite the establishment of its planned Inter-State Transmission System (ISTS), which consists of four new 400/220 kilo volt substations, for Delhi. ISTS was announced in January 2015 and was expected to become operational by 2017. ISTS Tughlakabad substation promises a permanent solution to the Badarpur plant and improved grid connectivity. But land for it is yet to be allocated and as a result the project has been delayed.

The city’s gas-based power plants, meanwhile, remain grossly underutilised. Bawana, Delhi’s latest, largest and most efficient gas plant, is operating at a meagre 10 per cent. The city’s gas-based power capacity amounts to 2,108 MW which could potentially meet over a third of Delhi’s peak power demand. Moreover, given the recent decline in gas prices, imported gas could provide a more attractive and less polluting fuel source (see ‘Natural gas is a less polluting fuel alternative to coal’,).

Look for national solution

Delhi mirrors the public health crisis in the country. National ambient air quality data shows that close to half of the Indian cities have particulate levels that are officially classified as critical. Cities are in the grip of a multi-pollutant crisis, and smaller cities are more polluted than metro cities.

The way forward is clear. India needs a quick clean air action plan to control pollution from all sources. Vehicles need special attention. Their numbers should be controlled with an efficient public transport strategy, along with fiscal and parking measures. Diesel cars need to be restricted and the gap between diesel and petrol prices should be reduced. Equally important is a transition from coal dependence to more sustainable and less polluting sources of power supply. A public health disaster in India is slowly unfolding. Delayed action is not an option.

Over two weeks and two extra days, the Paris climate conference delivered everything the world expected. Impassioned speeches. Hectic, sleep-depriving negotiations. There was confusion, impasse, rumour, closed-door meetings, innuendo and India-bashing. And, after a last-minute high drama about one auxiliary verb that would have destroyed all the hard work, a historical consensus called the Paris Agreement.

But, as researchers from the Centre for Science and Environment have found, the fine print tells a different story


The 21st Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or CoP-21, was supposed to be held in Paris, France from November 30 to December 11, 2015. But it began informally on November 29, a day before. And ended, formally, a day after it was to end.

That had to do with CoP-21’s purpose. No less a goal than to bring a four-year negotiation process to a productive end: a consensus among 196 nations (195 nations + the European Union), set out in writing, on how best to tackle climate change. The nub of the Paris conference was the work of ADP, or the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. Their work began at CoP-17, held in Durban, South Africa, in 2011. There, the main result was the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, which tasked nations to come up with “another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties”, which would come into force after 2020. So ADP was constituted, to add substance to this bare wording. ADP’s deadline was 2015.

ADP held several rounds of talks during 2013-15. On the eve of CoP-21, the picture was still murky. Developed countries were determined not to shift their redlines. Developing country blocs were ready not to be pushed over. So tenuous was the shape of the draft agreement that had to be finalised during CoP-21 that ADP was re-convened a day before CoP-21 began. Peru handed over the CoP leadership to Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister. He got to work immediately, establishing four spin-off groups to commence negotiations. November 29, 2015. Not a happy day.

O happy day

CoP-21 formally began on November 30, 2015. Over 150 heads of state piled in into the conference venue, intent on creating a positive spin on a 25-year-old negotiation process going nowhere. The leaders were there, the French president said, “to give this conference a drive and ambition commensurate with the challenge”. Inspiration the negotiators didn’t need, or heed. For, across all four groups, sparring over the text had already begun.

The political mood wasn’t univocal, though. In his speech in Plenary Hall 1, US President Barack Obama called the Paris CoP a “turning point”. He remarked: “Here, in Paris, let’s secure an agreement that builds in ambition, where progress paves the way for regularly updated targets—targets that are not set for each of us but by each of us, taking into account the differences that each nation is facing.” In the other Plenary hall, Hall 2, developing countries were the dominant voice. President Jacob Zuma of South Africa remarked: “Developed countries, that have the greatest historical responsibility, must honour their existing commitments and continue to take the lead to address climate change.”


Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US announced a pledge to put in US $248 million into the Least Developed Countries Fund, a climate fund hosted by the Global Environment Facility. The intent was clear: promise money and break G-77/China unity.

Week 1: impasse

The first wrecking-ball hurled at the Paris Agreement was by Obama himself, at a meeting between him and leaders of some small island states on December 1. Talking about the agreement’s legal form, he said the specific targets each country had set to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may not have the force of treaties, but “periodic review” of those commitments would be legally binding. Indeed, the only element developed countries cared about in the agreement was the transparency/review mechanism. As the first week unfolded, it became clear that developed countries wanted to really shift the review mechanism goalposts. At Cancun, they had agreed on an MRV (measurement, reporting, verification) mechanism that worked differently for developed and developing countries, and was more stringent for the former. Now, they wanted a single arrangement equally applicable to all.

On finance, too, a stand-off grew. Developed countries wanted text inserted (“countries in a position to do so/willing to do so”) that would make all countries responsible for funding. The EU came out in support of this stance. The US, supported by the Umbrella Group (a bloc of the richest nations), also wanted the existing finance architecture, based on “differentiation”, to crumble: developed countries would no longer be the sole donors.

On December 5, ADP’s work came to an end. At a plenary meeting, it submitted a 48-page “draft agreement”. This was to be the basis of second-week’s negotiations, during the “high-level segment” where political decisions would be taken at a ministerial level. Said a sombre Fabius: “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” He also outlined the process. In the second week, there would be a daily stocktake, overseen by a committee called the Comité de Paris, presided over by Fabius, to facilitate a compromise. At the end of the first week, faultlines spread across all core issues, especially transparency, finance and the long-term goal. On the technology transfer mechanism, there was no movement. The loss and damage mechanism, too, was at a standstill; though developed countries did not mind a mention on loss and damage in the agreement, they made it clear there would be no talk or mention of “liability” or “compensation”, a US-promoted redline.

This, too was, clear. It was going to be an EIG+Umbrella Group v the G-77/China affair (EIG: Environmental Integrity Group, comprising Mexico, Liechtenstein, Monaco, the Republic of Korea and Switzerland). And what of the EU, usually a progressive bridge-builder at climate CoPs? What Miguel Arias Cañete, EU commissioner for energy and climate action, said in a press briefing on December 5 made it clear that EU’s stance on the core issues was as, if not more, hardline than the Umbrella Group, even the US. This was the real surprise of the week.


Week 2: brinkmanship and drama

Week 2 was all about repairing persisting faultlines. It was all about closed-door meetings between ministers, and wrangling about text outside the observers’ domain. On December 7, it was leaked that the US was so resistant to any mention of compensation or liability with respect to the loss and damage formulation that they wanted to bar it from ever being raised in the future. This showed that developed countries were determined to undermine any remnant commitment to justice in this process.

On December 8, in a startling breakaway move, Brazil joined the EU in proposing new text on international carbon trade. The proposal said nations that were willing could use “cooperative approaches” to cut emissions using “internationally transferred mitigation outcomes”. Environmental groups were surprised Brazil resorted to a mitigation-centric approach to bridge differences. Had Brazil—best known for insisting on a game-changing protocol based on the historical responsibility of developed nations at the Kyoto CoP in 1997—gone completely upside down? Explained Brazil’s lead negotiator: “It was necessary for someone to find the middle ground... There are bits and pieces that people will question but I think it’s the only sustainable deal.” However, as one European negotiator noted, this proposal, if agreed, would effectively replace the clean development mechanism (CDM), one of three market-based mechanisms enacted under the Kyoto Protocol.

On December 9, US Secretary of State John Kerry appeared before the world and delivered a speech that could only be called an act of climate vaudeville: “What’s really disturbing is that this [extreme weather becoming the “new normal”] is exactly what scientists told us would happen. The science has been warning us for decades, screaming at us...” His use of “us” was really strange. Who was “us”? The rest of the world, or the US?


Kerry also announced a dole for poorer countries, a pledge to double public grant-based adaptation investment from US $400 million to US $800 million after 2020. It was miserly, and a mere pledge, yet the rapt audience applauded! More importantly, he said a new coalition had got together in Paris: the High Ambition Coalition. As Chandra Bhushan, deputy director-general, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), wryly blogged, “You actually have a coalition that has developed countries who want to shift the burden of solving climate change to others and a set of 79 [African, Caribbean and Pacific Island] countries that have no serious obligations. And they call themselves the ‘high ambition coalition’. This must be the joke of the century.”

At another level, though, Kerry unwittingly revealed how muddy the negotiations had become by December 9. The G-77/China bloc was now asunder. AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) and SIDS (Small Island Developing State) sub-blocs were now aligned with the Umbrella Group. The BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) sub-bloc was now isolated. And when, on December 10, Brazil announced that it had become part of the High Ambition Coalition, the strategy became clearer: break BASIC up, and put diplomatic pressure to separate China and India.

On December 9 negotiators discussed a revised draft in an evening session of the Comité de Paris. It was a terse, 20-minute meeting. Fabius was harried. He presented a draft text of 29 pages. It incorporated recommendations of ministerial facilitators and ADP co-facilitators’ suggestions. He said compromise or significant progress had been made on capacity building, adaptation, transparency, and technology development and transfer. On the unresolved issues of differentiation, financing and the level of ambition of the agreement, Fabius encouraged parties to scale up consultations.

The evening of December 9 stretched into the night. It was pow-wow time, as countries responded to the “near-final” version of the text, trying to thrash out all outstanding issues. A CSE analysis of this text found it was riddled with major compromises. It was a sign that the Paris Agreement was moving only towards a weak deal.

Endgame

Hard lines and alliances as shifty as sand led to exhausted negotiators grappling with a 27-page draft agreement, still stymied by key issues, on the morning of December 10. They stumbled back into closed-door meetings. CoP-21 should have ended on December 11 at 6 pm Paris time, but didn’t. Fabius announced in the morning that, “I will not present the text Friday evening, as I had thought, but Saturday morning.”

“There is still work to do,” he said.


Later that day, China’s state news agency Xinhua reported President Xi Jinping had talked on the phone with Obama about the matter. “China and the US must strengthen coordination with all parties and work together to ensure the Paris climate summit reaches an accord as scheduled,” Xi told Obama. Such a story meant China was ready to forge an agreement.

The environment minister of India, Prakash Javadekar, was disappointed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s priorities of climate justice and less-energy intensive lifestyles were left out of the penultimate draft. “Polluters and victims cannot be put at the same level,” Javadekar said, underscoring India’s hard line on differentiation of responsibilities.

In the evening of December 11, the Associated Press reported that China was standing firm “on its demand that rich countries should bear a greater burden than developing ones in reducing emissions and helping countries cope with global warming”. Liu Zhenmin, deputy chief of the Chinese delegation, told reporters that this was the “core of our concern for the Paris Agreement”. The US and the EU, though, stood firm in wanting to move away from “differentiation” across all core issues. As December 11 ended, three hurdles remained: climate finance, differentiation and whether the overall goal in limiting global temperature rise should be 2°C or the safer 1.5°C.

Fabius held a series of consultations with individual countries during the final day and night, and individual delegations and groups of delegations met informally with one another. At this stage, virtually no one knew who was meeting with whom, and where the text stood. The result of this ad hoc process was a text containing new provisions of unknown provenance, which most delegations saw for the first time when it was presented to them in final form on the afternoon of December 12, hours before the end of the conference.

Strangely, no bloc objected to what was obviously a breach of procedure. One reason could be that, as soon as negotiators got the text, a huge controversy erupted over Article 4.4, or, more specifically, an auxiliary verb. Would the provision that developed countries undertake absolute, economy-wide emission targets be a “shall” or a “should”? While last-minute warfare over words was nothing new to the CoP process, this one threatened to derail the agreement. For on the choice of word hinged the ability of the US to join CoP-21’s outcome. If the provision said “shall”, representing a legal commitment, then Senate or Congressional approval would be required for US participation; that, the current administration would never agree to. If the provision was a “should”, then the Paris Agreement could be accepted by the US president as a presidential-executive agreement. The issue first erupted publicly the final afternoon of the meeting and delayed the closing plenary. Indeed, the final plenary had to wait for more than an hour while CoP president Fabius and his team, the US and Brazil tried to work it out.

But all was well that ended well. A technical correction was read from the podium, and at 7:46 pm Paris time Laurent Fabius lifted a leaf-shaped gavel and quickly gaveled through the agreement. It was done. What an evening in Paris.