South Africa hosts climate talks for developing nations

Johannesburg: As the world struggles to break a deadlock in climate change negotiations, South Africa and three other influential developing nations are gathering for a strategy session to ensure poor countries are heard.

Brazil, South Africa, India and China began to coalesce as a bloc at UN climate talks in December in Copenhagen. The group, known as BASIC, is in high-level meetings on Sunday and Monday in Cape Town.

The size of their economies means India and China can't be ignored, and South Africa and Brazil are good partners because of the standing they enjoy in their respective regions.

"BASIC is an important group," said Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment, an independent Indian think tank. "But only if it is willing to be the voice of the voiceless."

Copenhagen ended with an agreement forged by the BASIC countries, the EU and the US calling for reducing emissions to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels. The agreement also calls on rich nations to spend billions to help poor nations develop clean energy and deal with drought and other impacts of climate change.

The Copenhagen negotiators had barely packed their bags before they began to hear sharp criticism of the compromise — even from those who had helped draft it. South Africa said Copenhagen's failure to produce a legally binding agreement was unacceptable. Several nations complained that the industrialised world should have committed to deeper cuts in the emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Divisions

Follow-up talks in Germany earlier this month only underlined divisions, particularly a gulf between developing nations and the industrialised world.

The poor countries demand that those that grew rich off polluting industries pay to help developing nations buy clean technology and cope with the droughts, floods and other disruptions associated with global warming. Developing nations also say they cannot be denied polluting technologies, such as a coal-fired power plant for which South Africa just received a World Bank loan despite opposition.

Delegates left Bonn warning there was little chance of an agreement coming out of a crucial meeting in Cancun, Mexico at the end of the year. Cancun is supposed to produce a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, whose provisions capping greenhouse gas emissions by industrial countries expire in 2012.

In some ways, BASIC is an unlikely alliance. India and China, the world's most populous developing nations, have long been economic and political rivals. A border dispute sparked a war between the two in 1962.