“India and Pakistan might have their differences, but when it comes to climate change they are on the same page,” noted Indian environmental activist and director of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), Sunita Narain, at their annual South Asian media briefing held ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference 2013 which takes place in Poland this December. Most of the developing countries agree that rich countries must reduce their carbon emissions so that poor countries can grow.

“One US citizen emits more carbon emissions than 107 Bangladeshis and 19 Indians”, pointed out Sunita. However, no rich country wants to cut their carbon emissions voluntarily (by switching to alternative fuels and drastically reducing consumption). There is all this talk about low carbon growth but no answers as yet when it comes to ending our dependence on fossil fuels. According to Sunita, “rich countries now want emerging economies like China, India and Brazil to take on the burden,” but in her view “effective action is only possible with equity”.

The CSE has been campaigning globally for climate justice since the early 1990s, arguing that: “luxury emissions need to be distinguished from survival emissions”. The seeds of the climate justice movement were sown back then and each year the CSE sends its representatives to attend the UN Climate Change Conference to lobby for a “fair and equitable deal” that would limit global warming to two degree Celsius by the end of this century. If we continue with business as usual we are looking at a long-term average temperature increase between 3.6 and 5.3 degrees Celsius, which scientists agree would be disastrous.

There is no question now that we need to cut global emissions immediately; the first part of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently came out and it is clearly warning the world. The report of the Working Group I has examined the scientific evidence to infer why climate change is happening and what are the changes observed in climatic systems. According to the CSE, what the report does is to tell us in no uncertain terms, more than any report before, that climate change is happening because of mankind. The report says that “It is extremely likely (95 per cent confidence) that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951-2010.”

The report has also reiterated the urgency of climate change. It states: “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.”

The IPCC’s global panel of scientists peer review the latest scientific research and then put it out in the form of reports every six years; these reports are very influential. The first assessment report that was presented to the Earth Summit held in Rio in 1992 forecast the concentration of carbon dioxide doubling between 1990 and 2025. It led to the world adopting the important principle of “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities” which also called for giving finance and technology to developing countries to cut emissions. It formed the basis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The fourth assessment report that came out in 2007 won the Nobel Peace Prize (shared with Al Gore) for warning the world of the consequences of climate change. The report led to the Bali Action Plan, which called for the signing of an ambitious climate deal by 2009 in Copenhagen.

Copenhagen, as we all know, was a crushing disappointment. All the campaigning and lobbying came to naught as the conference ended with the weak Copenhagen Accord. One year later, at Cancun in Mexico, came the Cancun Agreements which were “too little, too late”. Basically, the world agreed to do little until 2020. Over the years, the IPCC reports have not dented the fossil fuel industry, which spends massive amounts of money to ensure that there are climate sceptics doing their PR job for them, discrediting the scientists and convincing the public that climate change is not really a problem.

The IPCC states the scientific evidence but it does not tell the world what to do about the problem. For that we have to wait for the UN Climate Change Conference 2015, to be held in Paris, when the world will come to some sort of deal. As Sunita explained, “In Rio in 1992, we felt we could change the world. We agreed that countries would reduce their emissions. Now the rich countries have a two-pronged approach: do little domestically and get India, China and Brazil to take on the commitments to reduce … The world has now changed, the rich did not reduce but the rest grew to take up the (emissions) space. Now we have run out of space.” The authors of the latest IPCC report have said the world has already used between half and two-thirds of its “carbon budget” – the amount of carbon dioxide it can afford to burn this century without pushing us towards more than 2°C warming.

In Sunita’s view, “there is no money on the table (due to recession) and no technology transfer and there are tough negotiations ahead. The manoeuvring space is limited and there is no option but to deal. Instead of a bottom up approach proposed by the USA in which countries pledge what action they will take and the world then measures how much is done, we would like to see a targeted approach: set a carbon budget for the world and then divide it based on responsibility.