Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet his climate change negotiators before he takes off on Saturday for a bilateral visit to the US where he is expected to discuss with US President Barack Obama the coming Copenhagen summit. India needs to firm up its position on climate change, free from confusing nuances. Chetan Chauhan reports. See special
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet his climate change negotiators before he takes off on Saturday for a bilateral visit to the US where he is expected to discuss with US President Barack Obama the coming Copenhagen summit.
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India needs to firm up its position on climate change, free from confusing nuances.
Environment minister Jairam Ramesh, in a note to Singh in October, called for a “naunced change” in India’s stated position — to turn it into a dealmaker from a deal breaker.
The PM’s special envoy on climate change, Shyam Saran, has said India’s is not altering its stand, and it should not. India wants the richer countries to take a bigger responsibility for cutting carbon emissions through transfer of clean technology and funds to developing countries. It’s a stand shared by China and all developing countries.
Ramesh wants India to do its own thing — cut emissions, set targets — and not wait for richer countries. Both Ramesh and Saran could not be contacted as they are abroad.
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Though no agreement is expected at the Copenhagen summit on climate change on December 7, a political statement is on the card. And India will have to go there with a clear line.
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Though no agreement is expected at the Copenhagen summit on climate change on December 7, a political statement is on the card. And India will have to go there with a clear line.
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The differing lines taken in Delhi created problems for Indian negotiators during climate negotiations at Bangkok and Barcelona.
“US negotiators asked us about the minister’s (Ramesh) interview to a US newspaper, that India was willing to reduce emissions,” said an Indian negotiator requesting anonymity.
Recognising the problems a change in stand can pose for India in Copenhagen, RK Pachauri, chief of intergovernmental panel on climate change, believes there is no need for India to make such indication.
“India should stick to its stand till rich countries like US declare their commitment to fight climate change,” he told Hindustan Times on Tuesday.
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.
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