PM has advised the Indian delegation heading for talks in Bali not to accept conditions that could interfere with the country’s growth rate of nine per cent, reports Chetan Chauhan.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh advised members of the Indian delegation heading for minister level negotiations at Bali on climate change that they should not accept conditions that could interfere with the country’s growth rate of nine per cent and have an impact on the efforts to reduce poverty.
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After a meeting with the PM on Friday, Science and Technology minister Kapil Sibal, who will represent India at the meet told the Hindustan Times that for sustainable development the per capita emission required is two tonnes. India’s per capita emission is about one tonne as compared to 20 tonnes of United States and 15 tonnes of Europe.
Sibal also said: “We can increase our emissions to achieve our goals to reduce poverty and sustained economic growth of nine percent. We are not obliged under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions,” he said. The minister also came down heavily on the developed world for failing to meet their commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. “Let them first deliver the promises and then talk about carbon reduction commitment for us,” he said. The trends show that carbon emissions have increased in most of the development countries.
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The Indian stand comes in the wake of a move by the developed countries led by Canada and Europe that there should be some voluntary carbon emission reduction targets for developing countries like India and China.
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The Indian stand comes in the wake of a move by the developed countries led by Canada and Europe that there should be some voluntary carbon emission reduction targets for developing countries like India and China.
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The developed countries have brought India, China and G-77 nations on the same platform to strongly oppose the developed world seeking carbon emission reduction and technology transfer without intellectual property rights to the developing world. “We all (G-77 and China) are trying to work out a strategy on the four major areas outlined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,” Environment secretary Meena Gupta said.
The areas are mitigation, adoption, technology transfer and resource transfer. She said that except mitigation nothing much has been done on adoption, technology transfer and resource transfer by the developed world to assist the developing countries.
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India will take a lead to vigorously propagate its stand that the climate change mitigation regime after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires, should be based on per capita emissions. “The targets for the developed world should be fixed on per capita basis as every human being is affected because of climate change,” Gupta said.
The high level negotiations including Environment, Finance and Trade ministers of 190 countries will start from December 12.
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.
