South Africa's Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica would meet fellow Ministers from Brazil, India and China in New Delhi, India on January 24, to discuss pledges for action against climate change.

The so-called Basic (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China) countries played a pivotal role in drafting the Copenhagen Accord, which was ‘noted' by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the international conference in Copenhagen in December.

The Accord, which has limited standing as it is not supported by all 193 members of the UNFCCC and is not a legally binding agreement, outlines 12 pledges and leaves blank spaces for information on quantified economy-wide emissions targets for Annex-I parties for 2020 to be filled in, as well as blank spaces for nationally appropriate mitigation actions of developing-country parties to be filled in.

These blanks must be filled in by January 31, and this is the substance of the forthcoming meeting of the Ministers in India.

"The meeting has been called to coordinate the positions of the four countries with respect to the submission of actions and future negotiations," an Indian government official told Reuters.

A South African Department of Water and Environmental Affairs spokesperson confirmed that Sonjica would attend, however no further details of the South African position were yet available.

Prior to the Copenhagen conference, South Africa outlined that it would undertake greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions mitigation actions that would result in a deviation below the current emissions baseline of around 34% by 2020 and by around 42% by 2025. This level of effort enables the country's emissions to peak between 2020 and 2025, plateau for about a decade and decline in absolute terms thereafter.

The Presidency highlighted that these mitigation actions would be conditional upon a fair agreement at the Copenhagen climate change talks and finance, technology and capacity building assistance from the developed nations to developing countries.

At the Copenhagen meeting, China indicated that it would reduce its carbon intensity for each unit of economic growth by 40% to 45% by 2020 compared with 2005 levels. Similarly, India pledged that it would cut carbon intensity by up to 25% from 2005 levels by 2020.