The Copenhagen Conference has claimed another victim: Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s prestige on the international stage. Her state visit to India to hash out issues as far ranging as investment in cross-border electrical grids, prisoner swaps and child trafficking got derailed when her Indian counterpart decided to attend the talks in Copenhagen.
Her visit has been rescheduled so that now she will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on January 11th to finalize matters on issues of mutual interest and advantage. Although much of the language on the various accords had already been finalized, nevertheless this move must have been a surprise–though surely a game theorist might have seen that move coming a mile away.
The climate deal was doomed from the beginning because there was no accord that could be reached given the requirement for unanimous agreement on any final decisions made and the alarmingly diverging interests and views that countries like the U.K and China have on the politics and economics of environmental change. Nevertheless, knowing that President Obama was scheduled to close out the conference on December 18th, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh decided, quite belatedly to attend; perhaps he intended to influence the outcome. Even though some sources state that India, China, South Africa and Brazil were meeting behind closed doors, and were doing so at a distance from the U.S. delegation, which by then included President Obama, India was able to negotiate a deal with China, Brazil and the United States to receive foreign aid in order to combat the adverse consequences of climate change. More importantly it held its own ground on the issue of mandatory emissions cuts. So, perhaps Manmohan Singh went to Copenhagen knowing it would succeed by forcing the conference to broadly fail, and therfore asked that Bangladesh reschedule the visit with Hasina’s blessings.
For, finally, Bangladesh will be a likely–and deserving– recipient of these funds. All that remains is to figure out a payment scheme and a feasible disbursement schedule that is not subject to political gamesmanship.