A climate convention to reduce the sources of global warming is planned to be a major outcome of UNCED. But the latest convention meeting in mid-September reveals a rocky road to Rio.

The Nairobi session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (INC) appears to have produced very little movement on key North South issues - financing, transfer of and access to technology and governance of financial mechanisms.

This is the assessment of observers based on reports from the Nairobi session and the various documents and proposals which the bureau of the INC committee dealing with these questions produced at the end of the session, held in September.

In the light of discussions and comments at Nalrobi, the co-chair of the two working groups of the INC are to produce, on their own responsibility, revised drafts of various proposals, and these are expected to be taken up for further consideration and negotiations at the next session.

The INC, chaired by Jean Ripert of France, is due to hold its fourth session, in Geneva in December and a fifth in New York in February.

While it may turn out differently, as it stands now the US reluctance and refusal to agree on any commitments to cut back carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would result in a framework convention without commitments, Ieaving the door open for negotiating commitments in the future through protocols.

This is similar to the approach followed by the Vienna Treaty for the protection of ozone, which had been followed up by various protocols for reducing or eliminating use of chlorofluorocarbons.

On the face of it, Third World nations would not lose by signing or joining such a convention, but in fact they could find themselves very much handicapped in future when individual issues are taken up and protocols adopted - without an integrated approach - observers noted.

Such kind of 'salami' tactics would handicap them, since whether they join or not, the US and the powerful industrial nations, through their control of international monetary and financial institutions- the IMF, World Bank and regional development banks - could easily apply conditionalities to their general development loans to ensure that Third World countries comply with the policies in the protocols.

The negotiations for a Framework Convention for Climate Change, a UN General Assembly mandated independent intergovernmental negotiating process, and the separate negotiations under UNEP auspices for a biodiversity convention are aimed at concluding two international treaties and agreements that would be completed and readied for signature at the UNCED 'Earth Summit' in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, along with the proposed Earth Charter and Agenda 21 programmes of the UNCED.

All three are inter-connected, but the negotiating processes and fora are different, with different political, environmental and other dynamics.

According to sources who were at the Nairobi meeting, the discussions and negotiations showed that the South may have some leverage in that the negotiations are moving towards possible quid pro quos - with the North realising that the participation of the countries of the South in the conventions may have to be bought'.

The issue of finance. as well as the issue of technology transfer or access to technology, is one before the UNCED, INC and the biodiversity negotiations.

At least on the matter of finance, it is becoming clear that the North. particularly countries like the US, will make a concession only at Rio. and they will make it only once - on the climate convention or UNCED but not in both.

Though the biodiversity negotiations also involve the issues of financing and technology, they are in a narrower focus. The UNCED process as well as the INC involve wider issues of economy, development reaching into every aspect Or human activity and economic processes.

This means that the Third World countries have to think through their strategies and tactics, including perhaps the tactic of keeping the climate convention too wide open until Rio so that they have an overall picture and are able to make assessments.

It also means, observers say, that instead of adopting a damage-limitation exercise, as now, they should make their own initiatives and formulate their demands and proposals - on the basis of their own interest and need for protection of environment, for creation of 'ecological space' for their development and the international policies and measures and actions needed to subserve this process.

The negotiations on climate change and framework convention have a North - North component of negotiations and a North-South component, and the entire negotiating process, participants say is one involving the 'weight' of countries in terms of climate change human activities.

In the North-North context, it is a negotiation amongst the US and EC, and to some extent Japan.

In the North-South context, in the South it involves very much China, India, Brazil and Saudi Arabia- all countries with population, existing and planned industrialisation processes and either coal (China and India), oil (as in case of Saudi Arabia an export sector) or other such energy sources that will have an impact on emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) or human activities like rural agriculture etc that might produce other green house gases (like methane CH4) which, unlike CO2, have a shorter life time before breaking up into constituent elements.

While everyone recognises a large element of uncertainty, there is a general consensus among the scientific community that human activity of the past 100 years or so, particularly the industrialisation process, is already straining the ecosystem capacity of CO2 and unless arrested and reversed fast, the world will face global warming resulting in some uncertain changes in climate but one likely to increase sea water levels through melting of ice etc.

Until the industrial revolution and the overburdening of the capacity of the ecosystem by the activities in the North, nature broke down the CO through the photosynthesis process of plant life and absorption in the sea. Now the emissions are greater and faster than the capacity to recycle CO2 into its constituent elements.

This has raised the need for are resting and reversing the CO2 emissions, and for preserving and enlarging the 'sinks' that absorb these emissions and reconvert them into carbon and oxygen.

Forests and other biomass are one source of 'sinks'. The seas and oceans and large water masses are another source. Paradoxically, though there are many uncertainties here too, a global warming that raises the sea-levels (by melting of polar ice, for example) thus adding to the seas and oceans could also absorb the CO2.

On the issue of CO2 and emissions, there is a general consensus that the Third World in its development and industrialisation process will have to increase energy consumption and that to make way for them, the North would have to stabilise and cut back its own consumption.

However, whale agreeing in theory, the North is also trying to maintain status quo. Even more, the US which has the highest per capita energy consumption and emissions, and will have to expend probably tens of billions of dollars in cutting it back, is using the argument of scientific 'uncertainties' and the issue of contribution of other gases like CH4 to oppose any commitments.

At Nairobi the issue of the North stabilislng and reducing its energy consumption and making space for the South would appear to have turned into a North-North question, particularly between the US and EC of 'burden-sharing'.

The US took a cautious line - on the basis of scientific uncertainties and need to adopt cost-effective methods and thus against any commitments.

While the US was up front with resistance to commitments, some observers believe that other industrial Nations too are of a similar view but hiding behind the US position.

The US also combines the issue of CO2 emissions (sources) with the issue of sinks (forests etc).

The Nordics and Norway in par ticular came up at Nairobi with the idea that since further cutbacks by them would be enormously expensive, they would pay for a country like Poland increasing its energy efficiency and cutting back emissions.

The costs of improving energy efficiency and thus reducing emissions are viewed generally as easier and cheaper at the very early stages - through which Europe and Japan have already passed. ln the latter two cases, further cutbacks would be costly.

While the issues of access to technology and its transfer on non-commercial terms, as well as issues of finance were nagged at Nairobl there are no serious efforts to discuss or negotiate them.

On reducing emissions, Japan brought up again its 'pledge and review' concept - by which every country will undertake a national plan and study and outline its pledges for cutting back emissions, and these plans and pledges would be periodically reviewed by a committee of the contracting parties.

At one stage it appeared that the EC too would support this. But US was not willing even to this approach.

The major Third World Countries too opposed it. These countries saw in this a potential instrument of the North to control and oversee their development process and domestic economic policies and dictate what the South could or could not do.

At a later stage, by the end of the Nairobi meeting, the EC would appear to have withdrawn from the pledge and review concept, making clear that it was for specific commitments in the convention for stabilising and cutback of CO2 emissions.

France and India in their various proposals have suggested stabilisation and cutbacks by the ICs, with Third World countries adopting energy efficient production.

lndia has said that any measures that Third World countries would adopt must be on a voluntary basis, and subject to the financing of the incremental costs through new and additional funds and access of the countries to necessary environment-friendly technologies on non-commercial terms are assured.

France and India have also put forward as a long-term strategy and commitment that the energy consumption and CO2 emission of all countries should converge to a common per capita level.

The discussions at Nalrobl have been useful, and the participants are moving into the area of quld pro quos, but they are a long way off from settling the terms of a convention or agreeing on commitments, one of the participants said.

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