Fairness includes transparency for, in addition to being fair, the measures must be seen to be fair. Non-proliferation provides a ready lesson. One of the reasons on account of which agreements such as NPT, CTBT, FMCT have not made the progress they might have is that there has not been in place a verification mechanism that is under international control. When verification is left to individual countries that, at that time have the technical capacities to verify, things come to hang on their convenience. To cite just one instance, that the US agencies knew about A.Q. Khan’s bazaar for years has by now been well documented. They shut their eyes to it; indeed, they squashed investigators among their own staffs who unearthed the evidence and were insisting that it be acted upon. Therefore, for a regime of measures necessary for climate remediation to be acceptable, the methods of prescribing the obligations of individual countries, and of assessing the extent to which the countries are adhering to them, must be under international control.

Fourth, while in the first instance obligations have to be prescribed country-wise, for concrete action plans to be drawn up, it is necessary that we disaggregate. After all, the extent to which the formal, organised industrial sector is contributing to the total emissions emanating from, say, India is very different from the extent to which the vast numbers engaged in the agricultural sector are contributing. Disaggregation will help twice over — it will help acquire the critical constituencies that are required to back the requisite measures, and it is necessary to devise actionable plans. We should, therefore, prescribe steps industry-wise, sector-wise. Doing so will also show that the entire programme is manageable — in that drastic reorientation is required of a few, not from all.

... contd.