The Copenhagen Summit on global warming has ended rather unspectacularly. There has been much expectation on the part of social organisations as well as climate activists to make some headway out of the climate challenge that is yet to develop into a full blown crisis. The summit had many groups of activists and volunteers from all parts of the world pouring into Copenhagen to voice their concerns about the seriousness of the issue that has largely been ignored by political decision makers. All the action that has happened on the issue has largely been half-hearted with no coherent policy on the modus operandi or the quantum of measures that needed to be taken.
Despite all the hype, what the Copenhagen summit has led to is something largely unfinished, to be resumed at the next summit at Mexico. On the other hand, the representatives of the nations that took part in the summit and took up their negotiating positions have a lot to account for, as they now have to face the situations and ground realities in their respective home grounds. That is the difficult part, as is seen by calls for accountability and charges of having relented too much to the developed nations, on Mr Jairam Ramesh, who negotiated India’s stance.

India felt pressurised into action when China took the lead in announcing unilateral measures of cutbacks on carbon emission. Though India could well have stuck to its position, the clamouring between the ruling party and the opposition and the press that Copenhagen received before the summit commenced could have let India’s position out in the open for the world to analyse.
All said and done, the entire process of negotiation in the Climate Summit have been rather haphazard, with not much importance given to the position of business houses in the issue, who happen to be the main stakeholders in the entire scheme of things. What is amply obvious is that the efforts that the Indian Government made in coming up with a negotiating position, which were largely eleventh-hour preparations, were not at all matched in the policy initiatives that the Government has taken in making sure that work towards emission reductions have started. While there are talks of the Government having given the go-ahead for a renewable energy policy, most businesses are either caught unawares of the implications of climate change or they are indifferent to the issue.

India and other countries require systemic changes and a comprehensive policy initiative that involves businesses in the dialogue process to make any meaningful headway in its Climate Change policy. Or else, all that the governments would be bothered about is to claim victory in the summit and appease the opposition parties, which would not make any difference to the actual problem of global warming.