Stalemate continues at Copenhagen with angry protests in the streets. India and China formed the axis to oppose US and EU Nations, those who try to bypass Kyoto Protocol and the Bali Action Plan. India would not compromise on its three key principles - no legally binding emission cuts, no peaking year and no international review of domestic-funding mitigation actions.

The outcome of the talks must be within the U.N. Framework on Climate Change abide by the Bali Action Plan and Kyoto Protocol. But on Monday (14/12/2009),UK made it clear that the potential agreement at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference would have to go beyond the Kyoto Protocol and that global emissions would peak by 2020. All major countries would have to summit for monitoring and verification of all actions taken to combat the climate change.

On the same day, environmental ministers from emerging economies like Brazil, South Africa, China and India (BASIC) left the scheduled informal ministerial meetings, protesting that the negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol were being ignored and the Africa group threatened to boycott the present proceedings, which may put the whole agreement into back-burner.

Ignoring the Kyoto Protocol in favour of a proposed new Copenhagen accord means that we are going to accept the death of the only one legally binding instrument that exists now. Many rich countries, however, want to merge the Kyoto Protocol into a new deal with emissions reduction obligations for developing countries, as well as developed countries, including the US. It is too soon even to second-guess the outcome of Copenhagen climate summit.

The re-set goal is to produce an 'operationally binding political agreement' on how and under what terms the actions needed to prevent dangerous global warming will be distributed globally, across 192 countries. Copenhagen agreement is a political agreement which should also match with legal and scientific agreements. The hope is that such an arrangement, which needs to be a major advance on the Kyoto Protocol within the parameters set by the UNFCCC, will eventually lead to a fair, just and workable legal instrument.

Unfortunately, the signs and indications from the first few days of Copenhagen have not been auspicious. This agreement at Copenhagen may be a political agreement and not a legally binding agreement in nature. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone. The science is complex and hard to be understood by common people, but the facts on climate change are very clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years.  At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world, covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided.

The majority of developing countries continue to push for a legally binding agreement in which the developed nations would lead with drastic emission reductions (25-40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020) and significant efforts to provide financial assistance(well above the $10 billion a year) , coupled with technology transfer to the developing nations.

But the prospects of such an agreement do not seem bright at all. Developed countries have fear that the developing countries like China and India may grow very fast and overtake developed countries. There are however indications that developed nations, instead of reaching across the trust divide, are contemplating the imposition through political arm-twisting, of a solution that safeguards their key interests while overriding developing country concerns.

Faced with an impasse in the negotiations, the developed nations, in a move initiated by the United States, have been working towards an operationally binding political agreement that has the potential to be converted into a legally binding agreement at an unspecified future date. The major developing economies have done well to anticipate such a biased outcome while adopting a forward-looking attitude themselves.

The draft text agreed to by China, Brazil, India, South Africa and other developing nations, gives them reasonably strong negotiated hand. President Obama especially needs to walk his climate talk with new multilateral vision. Whatever the Copenhagen outcome, India's climate policy must do what a country with the world's second largest population needs to do : reorient itself towards a green path of economic growth, in a much more earnest and internally equitable way than the National Action Plan.

As negotiations on climate change gathered momentum at Copenhagen, India has said it will play a constructive role even as it slammed efforts of the developed world to make domestic emission cut commitments of developing nations legally binding and verifiable. India would not agree to the concept of "peaking" a clause incorporated in the first official draft which mandated developing nations to cap their emissions without any mention of a timeframe for that.

Peaking a clause would adversely impact the development of rural electricity in the country already facing a huge backlog in this area. While ruling out any dilution of the previously-stated "red lines" drawn by India, it can play a constructive, facilitative, leadership role to ensure an effective and equitable agreement. European Commission Director-General Karl Falkenberger said that the EU expected India, China and other emerging economies to report on their national mitigation programmes which would be incorporated in an international treaty. "We need them in a legally binding manner from everyone. Differentiated commitments, we can accept, but it has to be verifiable," he said.

The remarks drew objection from India, with senior negotiator Mr. Chandrasekar Dasgupta noting that Mr. Falkenberger's position fell short of climate justice. India and China should not expect any assistance from the industrialised world for undertaking mitigation and adaptation measures in their respective countries. Three years ago the industrialised nations in Port of Spain declared, that they were willing to spend $ 10 billion per annum on developing nations. In Copenhagen the money had shrunk to doling out $10 billion for three years.

India and China will be expected to draw money from the carbon trade, but even on that issue there is no clarity. The present carbon trade has been drawn out in the Kyoto Protocol. But if that will be trashed then there will be no incentive for developing countries. It is only if the carbon trade expands that the industries in the West will look for lower cost options in developing nations. But the carbon trade needs a legal basis from which it can draw its validity. India, Brazil and China want clarification on these issues based on Kyoto Protocol. On the other hand, US-led rich countries criticised a draft climate pact on Saturday (12/12/2009) for not making stronger demands on major developing countries, as environment ministers arrived in Copenhagen to ramp up the level of talks.

Initial reaction to the negotiating text submitted on Friday, underscored the split between the US-led wealthy countries and countries still struggling to overcome poverty and catch up with the modern world. US delegate Jonathan Pershing said the draft failed to address the contentious issues of carbon emissions by emerging economies."The current draft doesn't work in terms of where it is headed," Mr. Pershing said in the plenary, supported by European Union, Japan and Norway.

“All week we have heard a string of excuses from rich northern countries to make adequate reparations for the ecological crisis that they have caused," said Lidy Nacpil, of the Jubilee South Coalition. A new economic model is needed to replace 20th century industrialism, one that can cope with the billions of new consumers, exhausted ecosystems and an unstable climate. It can be done on an equitable basis, keeping in mind the interests of both rich and poor. But rich nations are not in a mood to reduce their emissions significantly, and also they hesitate to provide finance and technology to poor nations, not for charity, but for reparation to nature.

The rich were to deliver legally binding cuts amounting to 25 to 40 per cent of their Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the 1990 levels by industrialised countries, by 2020.The rich people have to deliver close to $400 billion a year in assistance to developing countries for adaptation measures. The rich were also to deliver a mechanism to ensure free flow of the best clean technology to developing countries.

Kyoto Protocol requires industrialised countries to bring down their emissions to 5 per cent less than the 1990 levels and assist the developing countries. But US has not ratified that the Protocol Copenhagen climate change conference is being held to fix enhanced emissions reduction targets for rich countries during the second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol, which starts from 2012. This is because most countries have not even fulfilled their first commitment period targets.

The 12-day effort to sketch a pact to fight against climate change saw major controversy on Tuesday, over an early Danish draft text. Then on Wednesday, the first cracks appeared within the developing bloc itself, due to divide and rule policy of the western bloc. The pacific island state of Tuvalu - backed by other poor countries most exposed to climate change - called for talks that would lead to emerging giants China, India and Brazil taking on binding emission curbs.

The United States and China, meanwhile, treaded words over blame for the green house-gas crisis. Provision of financial support to developing countries by developed countries cannot be regarded as an act of charity, but must be seen as a legal and historical responsibility. The developed countries are paying for reparation to the nature out of a sense of guilt and not giving charity.

Our planet cries for attention when US and China, two main opposite blocs are fighting for rights. The draft proposal prepared by host nation Denmark for the climate change summit starting on Monday, removes the distinction between developed and developing countries and will be disastrous for India and other developing countries.

Because of this statement, the UN Copenhagen climate talks were disarray on Tuesday, after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that showed that world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all climate change negotiations. The document also sets unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

The agreement prepared by US, UK and Denmark, leaked to the Guardian, is departure from Kyoto Protocol's principle. This document is described as a very dangerous document that may destroy the beautiful world. The figure of our planet - a shining blue and white orb silhouetted against the stars, the swirl of clouds with the blinding white of polar ice caps set against ocean blue - is an image almost every human carries inside as the symbol of our common home. The cryosphere -the regions of our earth covered by snow and ice - has long been considered the "canary in the coal mine" for global warming. We already knew things were bad, but we now know the future of snow and ice on our blue-white planet is actually much worse.

Loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet has increased threefold just in the last decade. Snow cover is decreasing, and land glaciers from the Himalayas to the Alps are disappearing at rapid rates with greatest loss in the Andes and American Northwest. Even mighty Antarctica is showing signs of overall ice loss now as temperature rises. What is needed in Copenhagen are visionary leaders: those willing to look beyond narrow national interest, or issues of blame and compensation, to the threatened future of our fragile planet. We also need an emergency plan for the cryosphere, acting now to preserve as much global ice and snow cover as we possibly can. That means reducing short-lived climate forcers not currently covered under any climate agreement, such as black carbon and ozone, and more focussed attention on short-lived climate gases such as HFCs and methane.

Black carbon contributes as much as 12 per cent to overall global warming; and even more in the cryosphere, where it darkens snow and ice to vastly increase melting. The capacity of oceans to absorb CO2 has been compromised. It fell from 27 per cent to 24 per cent between 2000 and 2007. Ocean acidification rate is accelerating due to carbon emission, and if it continues to go unchecked, many key parts of marine environment - particularly coral reefs, algae and plankton, which are essential for fish, will be severely affected.

The Copenhagen agreement needs both mid-term and long-term goals for 2020, 2030 and 2050. Not hopeful of an agreement on climate change at Copenhagen -the negotiations for which has already started - the group of four emerging economies, Brazil, South Africa, China and India, have set June 2010 as the next date by when a consensus could be arrived at.

The BASIC draft prepared by China to be considered during the high profile negotiations, clearly points out that the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action shall without any delay hold further sessions, in order to complete the work specified in the "present decision" (Copenhagen outcome) and the Bali Action Plan.

Humanity faces a profound emergency due to climate change. Unless we combine to take decisive action based on mutual sacrifice, climate change will ravage our planet, our prosperity and security. The Arctic ice-caps are melting, and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of failure havoc. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other, but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics.

This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone. The science is complex, but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rise to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C - the smallest increase we can prudently expect to following action - would perch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, millions of people would be displaced, entire nations drowned by the sea. Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polish treaty, real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism.

Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of Americans’ domestic politics. But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree on the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June's UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it, “We can go into extra time but cannot afford to replay." At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world, covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided and how we will share a newly precious resource : the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China, India and so on, take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere - three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce its emissions within a decade to less than its 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out that they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be the hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to global warming and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world's biggest polluters - the United States and China - were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs dip into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down - with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of "exported emissions", so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them.

Fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it. The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance - and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing. Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. Already some countries have recognised that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and an improved quality of life. Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature."

The politicians, intellectuals and scientists in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgement on this generation - one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it.