India to take firm stand on global warming

It will oppose any move to seek its commitment to cut greenhouse gas emission, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 23, 2007, 01:09:18 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India will oppose any move to seek its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in post Kyoto Protocol era and will ask the developed world to transfer Intellectual Property Rights with the clean technologies. Climate change will be discussed at the next G-8 meeting in Rostock, Germany.

The reason for the firm stand is evident in a note circulated by the Environment Ministry at a meeting with PM Manmohan Singh last week. "India’s per capita emission of carbon dioxide was just 0.87 tonnes in 1994 and was lowest in the world. It was just four per cent of the US per capita emission, eight per cent of UK's and 10 per cent of Japan's and 23 per cent of the global average," the note said.

EU has proposed that it will reduce carbon emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 from the 1990 levels and deepen it to 30 per cent by 2030 provided India, China and the US take commitment to stabilise and reduce green house emissions. Under Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012 India and China have no obligation to reduce emissions whereas the US has not ratified the protocol.

The ministry does not find much logic in the proposal saying the developed world has agreed to reduce emission by only 8 per cent after Kyoto Protocol. The developed world has to reduce emissions by 12 per cent from the 1990 level by 2012, which they may not meet, the ministry stated.

Another danger of agreeing to any commitment, the ministry said, was that in future India might have to take on higher level of emission reductions.

India's successful Clean Development Mechanism programme may face a slowdown from the developed world because some countries have put a cap on buying carbon credits from developing countries. India has the largest number of projects registered under the mechanism, which allows them to sell carbon credits to the developed countries.

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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