‘India will take tough stand at climate talks’

India is against a mandatory review of its climate action plan before 2030 but is open to market-based carbon pricing to encourage emission reduction, environment secretary Ashok Lavasa told HT weeks ahead of an international summit.

Updated on: Nov 19, 2015, 15:23:18 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India is against a mandatory review of its climate action plan before 2030 but is open to market-based carbon pricing to encourage emission reduction, environment secretary Ashok Lavasa told HT weeks ahead of an international summit that aims to nail down a binding agreement to limit global warming.

An illustration made in Paris on November 8, 2015 shows a deflated Earth globe. Earth has heated up by one degree Celsius (1.6 degrees Fahrenheit), Britain's weather office said on November 9, as greenhouse gases hit record levels just weeks before a crucial climate summit in Paris, which runs from November 30 to December 11. (AFP Photo)

Lavasa, who will be heading India’s official negotiating team at the fortnight-long Paris climate summit next month, said in the interview New Delhi is looking for a pact that is “balanced, comprehensive” and “under” the principles of the two-decade-old United Nations climate convention.

This means India will insist on clear differentiation between the developed and developing world at the Paris meet.

“We are against a lopsided agreement for instance like the first text of the Paris agreement which had to be corrected in the last negotiating session in Bonn,” he said, adding that “public- funded climate finance of US$ 100 billion” was needed to clinch the agreement.

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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