‘No shift in our climate change stance’

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday accepted that India for the first time had accepted two degree celsius as a possible threshold for guiding global climate change action but said it would not result in emission cap for India or change in its stand.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday accepted that India for the first time had accepted two degree celsius as a possible threshold for guiding global climate change action but said it would not result in emission cap for India or change in its stand.

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Intervening in a discussion in Lok Sabha, Singh termed the interpretation of the declaration on two degree Celsius as a significant shift in India’s stand as “one-sided” and “misleading”.

“The Major Economic Forum Declaration adopted at L’Aquila (Italy) is not a declaration of climate change, nor a bilateral declaration between India and other countries…The formulations are necessarily generally worded to reflect different approaches and positions of a fairly diverse group of countries,” Singh said.

He argued that the two-degree increase reflects the prevalent scientific opinion and re-enforces India’s concerns about danger of climate change.