India-China rejected the first draft

Glasgow. There is little time left for the ongoing climate conference in Glasgow, UK to end. Meanwhile, many developing countries, including India and China, have rejected the first draft of a possible agreement. These countries, being called the SVA group, say that developed countries are trying to pass their responsibilities to the rest of the world and implement new rules. The group has sought amendments to the impact mitigating section included in the draft.

This group, which calls itself like-minded developing countries, includes many other countries including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia. The first draft of the agreement came out on Wednesday morning. It had 20 paragraphs in a special section, which emphasized on achieving the target of 1.5 °C. The special thing is that the draft is revised many times before getting consent from everyone. However, no new draft related to it came out on Thursday. Whereas, it was expected that the new draft could be released by late night.

Bolivia’s chief negotiator Diego Pacheco, speaking on behalf of the LMDC group, on Thursday described it as a “new carbon colonialism” and said that the goal of net zero by 2050 is being imposed on developing countries. If we accept the goal of net zero by 2050 for all countries, then developing countries will be unfairly caught in the issue of climate change, he said. This will happen because developed countries will have the economic and technical capabilities to achieve the target.

He further said, ‘As developing countries, we will be caught in this, because we will never be able to fulfill the goals that they are setting before the whole world. And the countries which will not be able to achieve net zero target will be condemned morally and financially. This is wrong and against climate justice.’ He spoke of the need to fight against this ‘carbon colonialism’. He said that all countries were asked to increase their work for the climate, so that the rising temperature could be stopped at 1.5 degree Celsius, but in this work the help of money and technology was not taken into account.