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New Delhi: Developing countries have pledged greater levels of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions than the rich nations despite the developed world being responsible for a large part of the historical emissions.
This conclusion by the Stockholm Environment Institute has stirred debate about how far India would now be willing to go with the US and Europe lagging behind on substantial actions to prevent climate change but asking for greater commitments from the developing world.
"There is broad agreement that developing country pledges amount to more mitigation than developed country pledges," a report by the institute said.
Countries provided these pledges under the Copenhagen Accord with developing countries such as India pledging to take actions to reduce emissions voluntarily despite not being required to do so under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The SEI report is based on four detailed studies from different reputed institutions including UNEP and McKinsey and Company.
The four independent studies used different parameters and assumptions to bring the different kinds of pledges into a comparable format and all four came to the same conclusion though the difference between promised goals of the rich and developing countries varied.
The authors of the SEI report concluded that unless the UN accounting system shut the loopholes, the rich countries would be able to meet their pledges "with very little actual mitigation, and possibly with none at all".
It also noted that the rich countries had not decoupled their consumption patterns from emissions but rather they had shifted many of those emissions to developing countries. In other words, the fossil-fuel driven consumption levels of the rich countries have not reduced over time and the actions taken by them to reduce emissions have been only those which brought net-benefit to their economies.
The report said the developed countries held three-quarters of the world's GDP and were responsible for 75% of the historical emissions. "It seems self-evident that the developed world should take responsibility for much more mitigation effort than the developing world, and that this effort must have both a domestic and an international dimension," it said.
"The developed world must raise their level of ambition to the levels demanded by science and equity. And, of course, they must fulfill those ambitions through actual mitigation, not through accounting loopholes," it added.
The report noted that even after the rich countries agreed to do so, it would still require actions by the developing world to prevent dangerous climate change.
