PM stands ground on climate accord

Reiterating India’s position and warding off renewed pressure on the Copenhagen accord, the Prime Minister said on Friday the deal was a “catalogue of voluntary commitments and not a negotiated set of legal obligations”.

Updated on: Feb 6, 2010, 24:27:01 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Reiterating India’s position and warding off renewed pressure on the Copenhagen accord, the Prime Minister said on Friday the deal was a “catalogue of voluntary commitments and not a negotiated set of legal obligations”.

US President Barack Obama has sought India’s support in turning the Copenhagen Accord into a binding treaty. Yvo De Boer, UN’s top climate-change official, has set February 11 deadline for associating with the accord — an agreement between 26 countries, including the Basic countries.

The Basic countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) had on January 31 submitted “voluntary domestic mitigation actions” without referring to the accord, the trigger for Obama and Boer’s letters.

The US wants the accord to be the basis of a future treaty, but developing nations, including India and China, are against it. The PM is believed to have conveyed to them that India and other Basic members viewed the accord as non-binding.

“The Copenhagen accord, which we fully support and will take forward, is a catalogue of voluntary commitments and not a negotiated set of legal commitments,” Singh said at the inauguration of the 10th Sustainable Development Summit on Friday.

The purpose of the accord was to contribute to the negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol and long-term cooperation, he said. Country heads of Finland, Norway, Bhutan and Greece, and environment ministers of more than 30 countries are attending the three-day meet.

Sharing disappointment of world leaders such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel with the limited success at Copenhagen, the PM said, “A modest accord that is fully implemented may be better than an ambitious one that seriously falls short of its targets.” It was a reference to the emission targets set in Kyoto Protocol, which most of the rich countries have failed to meet.

Singh also said Basic countries, together with G-77, will aim at “comprehensive, balanced and equitable” outcome at Mexico summit in December based on “common but differentiated responsibility”.

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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