Climate Change Negotiations and Third World Countries (Past, Present and Future)

International response to tackle climate change resulted in the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 1992 (IPCC), entrusted with the task to present scientific findings to develop international legal framework on climate change. IPCC presented four reports and fifth report is around the corner which successively endorsed the climate change phenomena, its impacts and vulnerabilities of the different regions mostly inhabited by the third world countries. International efforts to tackle the climate change phenomenon resulted in the designing of the United Nations Convention Framework on the Climate Change 1992 (UNFCCC) embedding different environmental principles and the most pivotal one was the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities reinforcing the historical responsibilities notion of the developed countries to help developing countries in terms of finance and technology. This principle remained the guiding principle of UNFCCC negotiations since 1992 between developed and developing countries and got legal expression in the Kyoto Protocol 1997(upto 2012 and extended up to 2020 on interim basis to frame new agreement by 2015, applicable by 2020) to UNFCCC which prescribed compulsory obligations to developed countries and provided cushion of time allowance for developing countries obligations to reduce the carbon emissions; the real objective of UNFCCC and the financial help and technological transfer for adaptation and mitigation the carbon emissions. Unfortunately, developing countries could not effectively implement the climate change obligations and could not equip themselves to put themselves on the path of sustainable development resultantly having stalled round of negotiations in each year Conference of Parties (COP) except in COP 17 at Durban 2011 where it was principally agreed that new regime or agreement needed to be sketched by 2015, to be applied by 2020, applicable to all parties (moving away from the cornerstone principle of common but differentiated responsibilities) but developing countries started interpreting the cornerstone principle in such a manner and terms to suit them like the common but shared responsibilities according to historical sharing towards carbon emissions for each country which choked the negotiation process and endangered the negotiation for new international climate treaty to tackle climate change horrendous effects on the earth eco-system