Big three likely to meet in Rio

Meeting to decide on sustainable growth parameters. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: May 6, 2012, 17:46:37 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The big three --- Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, US President Barack Obama and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao --- are likely to meet in Rio De Janerio, capital of Brazil, in June end.

They will be there to participate in the Earth Summit, also called Rio-plus 20, where head of the states are expected to agree on how the world should grow in a sustainable manner in the next 20 years. The three day long head of the state session starting with ministerial dialogue would end on June 22 with a meeting of world leaders.

A United Nations led panel has proposed sustainable development goals to replace millennium development goals after 2015 but India and China are opposed the deadline based goals.

The north-south divide in the draft of the final document for head of the states is clear from ongoing negotiations at UN headquarters in New York. “As the negotiators are not budging from their states positions we expect the head to states to arrive at a consensus on future course of action,” an Indian official, who was part of the negotiating team said.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is keen on success of the Earth Summit and said to have invited Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the conference during his recent visit to India. The two leaders also discussed about sustainable and clean energy at a meeting last week.

Official sources said that Prime Minister Singh is keen to visit Rio as it could be probable a last meeting with Obama and Jiabao at one place. Obama is likely to get busy with his election campaign and Jiabao would be replaced by Xi Jinping, the new premier, later this year.

“An agreement at Rio, if it happens, would be path-breaking,” a senior government functionary said. Its possibilities as of now are not very bright. An official, however, seemed optimistic saying that political leaders know how to wriggle out of “bureaucratic brackets”.

The problem with the draft of the outcome document being discussed by negotiators of around 200 countries is “too ambitious” nature to attain sustainability that can hamper quick growth opportunities for the developing world.

The draft imposes more restrictions on emerging economies such as India, China and Brazil than the developed world and giving very less in return to agree to these restrictions.

The European Union, which has been a driving force, behind the outcome draft is will to budge to make SDGS as voluntary targets with periodic review for the development world, excluding India and China. That is a reason for heart burn for India and China.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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