India asks developed nations at climate talks to finalise pre-2020 action plan

Three years after the United Nations-led climate conference decided to extend the Kyoto Protocol to 2020, it has not been ratified by enough countries to make it an international agreement.

Updated on: May 19, 2015, 14:05:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Berlin

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Environment minister Prakash Javadekar asked rich countries on Monday to commit on the present and come up with emission reduction targets for the pre-2020 period in order to have a successful climate conference in Paris this winter.

A new agreement is to be signed for the post-2020 period but experts say commitment to emission reduction in the pre-2020 period is extremely weak under the second phase of the existing climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol.

“It will be ironical if we formulate post-2020 architecture without finalising the pre-2020 action plan,” Javadekar said at the St Petersberg Climate Dialogue organised by the German government to formalise a negotiating text for the 196-nation climate summit later this year.

Three years after the United Nations-led climate conference decided to extend the Kyoto Protocol to 2020, it has not been ratified by enough countries to make it an international agreement. The United States, Canada, Japan and Australia are among the major carbonemitting countries that have refused to be a part of Kyoto-2.

India’s move to ask for more commitment on pre-2020 targets is clearly aimed at putting pressure on countries like the United States which have submitted their emission reduction target only for the post-2020 period without any commitment for the interim period. It also deflects the pressure on India and China to accept carbon emission reduction goals.

“In this regard, the pre-2020 actions would be an important signal to the world about our commitment on climate change issues,” Javadekar said, while elaborating on India’s voluntary action to fight climate change.

He also outlined an eight-point charter that included a renewable energy goal of 175 GW by 2022, an increase in cess on coal to fund clean technologies, a new scheme for faster adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles, more money to state governments to create carbon sinks by afforestation and a plan to develop 100 smart cities.

(The writer’s visit to Berlin has been sponsored by the German Foreign Office.)

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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