INDIA'S Environment Minister, Jayanti Natarajan, put up a brave fight at Durban in defense of the Kyoto Protocol, at least its fundamental principle of environmental equity. The Durban conference even had to be extended by as many as 36 hours. But that was all she could achieve because the dice was loaded against her. Her predecessor, Jairam Ramesh, had made sure of that. Jayanti Natarajan kept insisting on equity being woven into the next treaty but it does not find mention in the formal closing declaration.

However, even assuming that the principle of environmental equity does guide the negotiations on a future treaty, the fact remains that a new arrangement, imposing binding commitments on all countries, developed or developing will finally replace the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol had laid down the fundamental principle that every human being born on the planet earth had an equal ownership of and access to the Global Commons, in this case the environment, and that the countries that had been historically responsible for depleting the Global Commons should take steps for the restoration of the same. Accordingly, it imposed certain legally binding minimum emission cuts on the developed countries to be achieved by 2012 and enjoined on them to assist the developing countries financially and technologically to enable them also to participate in the global effort to save the planet.

Unfortunately, the developed world continued to be restless with Kyoto Protocol ever since it came into force in 2005 and started coming up with alternate proposals aimed at changing the very basis of the Kyoto Protocol. The United States never signed it with its Senate rejecting it by 95 votes to 0. This encouraged other developed countries also to flout its provisions with impunity and to start working to sabotage the Protocol itself.

First, they started spreading the word that the Kyoto Protocol was to end in 2012 and a new treaty needed to be negotiated before that date. This was far from true. Kyoto Protocol does not end in 2012. It only imposed minimum emission targets to be achieved by 2012 after which the developed countries were to come up with enhanced targets for cutting GHG emissions. At conference after annual conference under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), these countries kept pressing for a new treaty which would impose obligations on all countries, including the developing ones. India's then Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, kept whittling down the position of the developing countries, first by endorsing the American MRV proposal, then by implicitly accepting the Australian-Canadian proposal of attaching country schedules to the new agreement and finally expressing India's willingness to accept legally bind-ing emission cuts at Cancun last year.

There was little, therefore, that Jayanti Natarajan could have done this year. The process of negotiating a new treaty had already gone far enough for her to be able to reverse it.

Even apart from the principle of equity and the need for respecting international treaties once concluded, what does Durban achieve in terms of the global objectives of limiting the temperature increase to 2 degrees above the pre-industrial levels? First and foremost, it postpones any decisive action by as many as nine years till after 2020 with almost a complete vacuum during the next decade. Immediately after the conclusion of the Durban Summit, Canada announced its intention to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. Japan, Russia and Australia are likely to follow suit. United States is already out of it.

The only commitment to reduce emissions during the period 2012 to 2020 may, therefore, come from the European Union which accounts for a meager 14% of the GHG emissions. In short, the biggest emitters have formally announced at Durban that they will do nothing over the next eight years to save the planet earth. There was no progress on tying up the details of the meager US$ 100 billion a year Green Climate Fund which, again, is to become operational only after 2020 nor a word on compensation to countries that take measures against deforestation - the two steps which had been announced with such fanfare at Copenhagen in Dec, 2009.

India were painted as the deal-breakers at Durban but not a word against the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia and Australia which are staying out of the still existing Kyoto Protocol with impunity and arrogance. If that is, indeed, the attitude of some of the biggest GHG emitters towards deals like the Kyoto Protocol, India will do well to carry the label of a deal-breaker as a badge of honour.

George W. Bush (Senior) said prior to the 1992 Earth Summit at Rio de Janiero that the American way of life was not up for negotiation. This 'American way of life' is costing the planet earth 20 metric tones of carbon dioxide per head annually as against China's 5 metric tones and India's 1.5 MTs. Barack Obama is more suave; yet the trajectory of American position on climate change reinforces the same statement of George W. Bush (Senior) from Copenhagen in 2009 to Cancun in 2010 and now to Durban in 2011. ·