If you were a rising country coming up from behind in a world where the US dominates, would you want to reduce your growth to ensure you don't catch up to the rest of the world as quickly?
You might if you were one of the nations most likely to be harmed by near-term climate change, and you were already dealing with a severe water crisis to boot.
The original idea was meant to avoid that. Many of the developed nations expected to contribute some sort of levy or subsidy, and try to help developing nations short cut their way past simply repeating all of our fossil-centric development trajectory. The earliest pre-Kyoto UN talks often seemed to be thinking along those lines. Sadly some nations - especially the US - weren't willing.
