The Guardian’s report on Wednesday (’EU presses China and India to reduce greenhouse gas emissions’) offered real food for thought. Of course developing countries have to play their part in tackling climate change, but only at a level in line with their responsibility and capability, and only once rich countries have shown true leadership and delivered the resources to drive global action. Obviously it should be rich countries that take the lead in that, having both much more responsibility for climate change and much more capability to respond.

As for the focus on India and China, though the recent EU text doesn’t specifically single these two countries out, there is a tendency to jump on them. Singling out China and India is unfair, since many other “developing countries” now have per capita incomes and emissions far higher than the EU, or even the US, Canada and Australia.  These would be first in line for any cuts on this scale by any measure of responsibility for emissions and (economic) capability - far ahead of China and India.

In addition, India can’t be bundled together with China: the average Indian person emits just 1.1 tonnes CO2 per year, compared to the 4.0 tonnes emitted by the average Chinese person.  India is already well below the global target for 2050 of 2 tonnes per person, and taking economic differences into account, the gap is wider still. That wide gap puts these two countries in totally different leagues, and both are again still many leagues below rich countries who have to do much more. The average person in the UK emits 9.2 tonnes per year, EU-wide it’s 8.8 tonnes and in the US it’s a whopping 20.1 tonnes per person.

Time and again, we have seen rich countries target China and India - and time and again we have seen how this hinders progress towards an effective global agreement. Of course, this finger-pointing also obscures the real story: that the real target for urgent action is the EU itself, and especially the other rich countries that are so far off-track. As we look ahead to the UN climate conference in Poznan this December, let’s hope there’s an end to this finger-pointing. Only by all countries working together and doing their fair share are we likely to get a fair and effective international deal to tackle climate change.

More from the Oxfam Press Office at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/news