There is always a sense of deja vu in news reporting. Many journalists who are covering the Ukraine war, also covered the conflict in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Similarly, hundreds of those who write on decarbonization and energy have gathered in Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh to report on the UN's Conference of the Parties, or COP27, where plans and actions to tackle climate change are being discussed.

What immediately comes to mind is COP-8 that was held in New Delhi 20 years ago. Just as now the focus is on meeting the goals set in Paris, the question everyone was then posing was, will the Kyoto Protocol ever come into force?

Some things do change and there are others which do not. The slugfest that we see today between the developed and the developing world over bearing the cost of decarbonization was also there back then. The varying ability of developed and developing countries was euphemistically mentioned as "common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities." In conference jargon, the industrialized and developed countries were merely called Annex-I and Annex-II parties. It was, after all, a conference of the parties, not countries.

The use of the term "decarbonization" and "energy transition" was rare. The phrase more commonly used was "reducing greenhouse gas, or GHG, emissions" and capacity building.

Two days before the conference ended in 2002, former Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee addressed the delegates with a brief speech, but most of the groundwork for consensus building was being done behind the scenes.

A "word analysis" of Vajpayee's speech would give an idea of how things have changed. He mentioned sustainable development, GHG, clean development mechanism, or CDM, but decarbonization and energy transition were not referred to even once. Nestled deep in his speech was a bold statement, "coal shall continue to be the most important source of energy in India in the foreseeable future". It did not make headlines because renewable fuels, which have now made some headway, were still in a stage of infancy then, posing no major threat to fossil fuels.

Focus was on the depletion of atmosphere's ozone layer and the role played by chlorofluorocarbons, which despite having been already phased out, still existed in old refrigerators and cooling systems.

While all milestones on climate change talks are well recorded in history, it is interesting to note that COP-8 was important in more ways than one. The shadow of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, or WSSD, held at Johannesburg just two months earlier was looming large. The Marrakesh accords of the previous COP in 2001 marked the conclusion of finding ways to implement the Kyoto Protocol. The world was looking askance at the COP in New Delhi to show the way forward.

Several key participants such as the US and Australia had not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. The US was keen on bilateral projects to implement climate-friendly technology. This was seen as a lucrative opportunity by several private companies.

One thing that is common then and now is carbon sequestration – capturing and storing carbon to reduce its volume in the atmosphere and potentially trade it as credits continues to be explored.

In fact, using carbon credits or investing in conservation to offset emissions targets was proposed during the 1992 Rio Earth Summit itself where UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed. Carbon credits have progressed toward becoming an advanced trading mechanism with exchanges to boot.

There were also differences on whether the post-Kyoto strategy should aim at adaptation to or mitigating climate change or both. The dilemma continues to this day.

It was in this backdrop that India's Environment Minister T R Baalu circulated an informal proposal on the Delhi Ministerial Declaration, which did not even mention the Kyoto Protocol.

One thing that has not changed is that in talks such as these negotiators argue over every comma and full stop of the proposed text. There were long discussions then on whether the declaration should strongly exhort the members who had not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, to do so in right earnest.

It was a 10-day conference in government-run Vigyan Bhawan (House of Science), which had been turned into a fortress with automated gun-toting security personnel providing unprecedented security to representatives of almost 170 countries. The word security had assumed an altogether different dimensions after the 9/11 New York attacks of the previous year. The security has now become even more stringent.

Foremost in the minds of the delegates was the environmental security and while they argued over the text of the draft of the Declaration, there were several rounds of talks behind closed doors when officials worked through the night and several journalists also stayed around till the wee hours of the morning but agreement on the declaration was still elusive.

The EU was keen that disbursing funds to developing countries should be linked to future commitments from them to cut GHG emissions. At one stage it seemed that there may not be any Declaration and all eyes were on the closing plenary session. Eventually consensus was reached and there was no mention of future commitments in the final Declaration.

The Declaration did "strongly urge" to "ratify" the Kyoto Protocol, but avoided the phrase "should ratify". The subtle art of negotiation came to the fore and the word "should" lost out.

Just over two years after COP-8, the Kyoto Protocol came into force, although it was never ratified by the US – its only signatory not to do so. The Paris agreement has overtaken Kyoto Protocol. Times have changed, but there is optimism that the climate may also change for the better.