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It is not the global economic recession but the world leaders who have failed to take climate negotiations to a logical end.

The week-long negotiations at the Panama City this week clearly indicated lack of political will to have an agreement to fight climate change for ensuring safe future for next generations.

A question that emerges is why there is lack of political will.

The answer is simple — climate negotiations are not about saving environment but about money. Those, who think that climate negotiators are serious about protecting humanity from adverse impact of global warming, are highly mistaken. The mandate of the negotiations is to protect business interest of individual countries.

The richer western nations in name of climate change want to impose restrictions on developing countries, especially emerging economic threats India and China. That is only the tool left with them to checkmate the economic power of India and more importantly China, which is threatening to engulf their cold war image of being super-powers.

The first salvo was fired by European Union, when it imposed carbon tax on flights landing in European Airports. EU’s environment commissioner Janez Potocnik defended the unfair and arbitrary decision saying the world did not agree to their emission trading regime for 15 years. It meant that if the developing world fails to agree with them, they would go ahead with its neo-colonial regime.

The developed world wants to show that the climate agreement is stuck because of stubborn attitude of China and to some extent India. But, the fact of the matter is that they are not willing to give anything for high emissions generated mostly by them.

Two years after committing a US $ 100 billion fund to flight climate change impact in the developing world, not a single penny has flown. Not even a single clean technology has been transferred to the developing world free of cost or without riders. The rich nations have failed to create clean technology hubs in the developing world as promised in the past.

It is here for you to judge, who is stubborn. India-China or the rich nations led by United States and Europe. The facts also demonstrate that the entire climate talks are about money, as I earlier said, and not protecting the environment from the harmful effect of rising carbon dioxide emissions.

The lack of political will has another reason – the domestic audience. The United States backed out of the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 after it found that its people will not agree to give money to the developing world to economically grow in a sustainable manner.

Europe and Japan, where the historic protocol was agreed, have now realized that the protocol gives too much to the poor nations without getting anything in return. Their opinion is lopsided as most of the technologies adopted because of the Kyoto Protocol were developed in rich world. Emergence of China, India and Brazil on the world platform as potential threats has generated public opinion against the protocol.

The public opinion in the emerging economies favours of Kyoto Protocol as its benefits have been reaped, especially by industry. Close to 90 % of the projects registered with the Clean Development Mechanism enabling fund flow from rich to the developing countries are by Indian and Chinese companies.

In light of the divide expecting an agreement on climate in Durban or near future appears to be a gigantic task. For the last two years, since Copenhagen, both rich and the developing countries have stuck with their respective positions. They will continue to do so as rich nations are going through economic crises and will not like to commit on finances, a key for the developing world to adopt a flexible approach.

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