India joins green group of nations, sets clean air target

India set its first emission target on Thursday, announcing it would reduce emission intensity by 20-25 per cent of its 2005 level by 2020. Chetan Chauhan reports.Special Coverage

Updated on: Dec 4, 2009, 02:16:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India set its first emission target on Thursday, announcing it would reduce emission intensity by 20-25 per cent of its 2005 level by 2020.

Outlining India’s "flexible" stand for the Copenhagen summit of 192 nations starting on Monday, Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh told Lok Sabha: “It won’t be an international commitment. We have agreed to it voluntarily and will achieve it irrespective of an agreement in Copenhagen.”

Emission intensity is a measure of emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP). For India, the target would mean emissions would increase to achieve 8-8.5 per cent GDP growth but its pace would fall. According to the Planning Commission, by 2020, India’s emission intensity would be half that of China, which last week announced an emission intensity reduction target of 40-45 per cent from 2005 levels.

India is the world’s fourth largest carbon emitter, China the biggest. India’s emission intensity fell 17.6 per cent between 1990 and 2005.

Ramesh said the target would be met by shifting from hydrocarbons to renewable sources such as solar and wind power. Another way is to increase the efficiency of using hydrocarbons (petrol, coal).

The minister said taking legally binding emission cuts and a peaking year for emission, as proposed by rich countries, was unacceptable and this was non-negotiable. But, he said, India was willing to discuss international scrutiny of domestic mitigation actions, which it has opposed so far.

Ramesh said all this took India’s climate position beyond the per capita emission approach, without compromising on it. “Per capita, accidental to India because of its high population, cannot be the only point of negotiations. We have to offer more to ourselves and to the world.”

India’s per capita carbon emission is 1.2 tonnes per year as compared to 20.1 of the US, the world’s second largest emitter.

At the debate in the House, the young MPs argued in favour of emission cuts. Senior MPs such as MM Joshi (BJP) felt India should not bow to the rich countries. “Change the domestic development model, make it more sustainable. Don’t repeat the mistakes of the West or else mother planet will kill us all,” Joshi said.

“I am not going to sell the country’s honour. I will protect its interests while ensuring a global leadership role for India,” Ramesh said.

Sunita Narain of Delhi-based NGO Centre for Science and Environment said India was offering too much and getting little in return. “Rich countries should pay for our big-ticket investments for solar and renewables.” Greenpeace said the onus was now on the rich countries to commit to deep carbon cuts.

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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