GreenTalk: Africa backs India on climate change emissions

Africa has united with India to demand that future measures to mitigate climate change should take into account equity and "common but differentiated responsibilities," a move that will make the negotiation of caps on emissions of greenhouse gases tougher, though perhaps fairer to the world's poor.

According to the Times of India, various new alignments emerged as several key groups of nations submitted their ideas on plans for cutting emissions. The Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) appeared to betray a shift toward an open alignment with the European Union, the paper said.

Meanwhile, the major developing economies from Africa openly sided with other emerging economies, and showed preference toward India rather than China.

"The cracks in the over-arching G77+China group of more than 100 developing countries had become evident in the past three years with the AOSIS and LDCs shifting their posts closer to that of EU in Durban," the paper said. "In fact, these groups were often seen defending the EU even when the European countries found it difficult to put forth their own line of attack against the emerging economies."