Environment negotiations stuck

“We are in a NATO exercise,” India's minister of environment and forest Jairam Ramesh joked on Wednesday morning at Copenhagen. “No Action, Talk Only.”

J Ramesh said on Tuesday, that the Basic group comprising Brazil, South Africa India and China, had met for several hours to formulate their position. The small island states are asking for stronger measures by developed countries and steps by developing nations to curb emission of greenhouse gases. Ramesh is expected to meet US senator John Kerry and World Bank chief Robert Zoelick during the day to discuss talks which seem to be stuck in a groove.

Some Western nations were supporting a single, legally binding instrument to emerge from Copenhagen, something which most of the developing nations among 192 countries gathered in Denmark oppose. Basic countries countered with a joint statement saying there were efforts by rich nations to “derail the Bali approach and even to renegotiate the principles of climate change.”

They seek to extend the Kyoto Protocol by five years, but the US was not a signatory to the protocol and is not in favor of its extension.