So what has the price you pay for rice got to do with big jamboree-like UN climate change meetings? Adding to inflation woes, climate change could throw asunder household budgets. Indeed, the jargonised statements out of one such meeting and the two-page document called the Bali roadmap  agreed upon by more than 180 countries in December 2007 might decide if what you consider essential to your diet today could become a luxury for millions tomorrow.

Climate change isn't going to come in like a giant typhoon. It's already happening. The first signs that it could alter agro-climatic conditions and hit agricultural yields are already visible. This year, the long dry winter and the alarmingly early monsoon is already making farmers nervous. It could, as the impacts increase, do worse damage: dry up rivers, increase threats of diseases and bring natural calamities at frequency not seen before.

But what can these UN documents do to prevent these changes? Would walking the Bali roadmap turn the world away from climate change calamities?

Let's put it this way: It's our only hope.

The documents are a precursor to a global agreement  the overall canvas of which the Bali roadmap sets  which could finally force countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions substantially. For the agreement to work, it would need massive cuts in the emissions by rich countries. Alongside, it would require industrialized countries to pass on funds to poorer nations to prepare for the changes already in place and technology to prevent further damage.

And herein lies the impasse. Industrialized countries demand that economically stronger countries like India, too, undertake emission cuts. But these countries say they aren't willing to make such changes at the cost of their poor. They need the energy sources  not-so-clean as well as the clean ones  to help push millions into an economic safety zone.

In fairness, industrialized world should bear the burden of these changes. An average American continues to emit almost 19 times more carbon dioxide than an average Indian; an average European almost 10 times more. The principle of equity demands industrialized countries bring their per-capita emissions down before they ask India to do so.

Developed world claims that in terms of total emissions India and China are fast catching up. China, India and Brazil recognize that there's an advantage to be gained in energy savings  by undertaking some changes what are usually called "no regret changes" where the economic cost of shifting to cleaner technology is not more than the savings that would occur. But whether India, China and G-77 countries can prevail upon the richest in the world to reduce emissions will be known only in 2009 when the countries meet in Copenhagen to thrash out the final formula.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Earth/Climate_of_mounting_concern/articleshow/3155101.cms#write

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