Environment expert RK Pachauri has questioned the UN recommendation that asks developing economies like India and China to have commitments on reducing carbon emissions.
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The head of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was the joint winner of the Peace Nobel, made the statement a day before the release of the UN Human Development report.
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“What we should be doing is sustainable development for local reasons, not because of global commitments,” he said at a press conference, releasing the IPCC’s synthesis report in Spain on November 17.
IPCC is part of another UN body, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Asked about the United Nation’s Development Programme (UNDP) report on climate change, Pachauri said: “I can say that the recommendation is questionable. The United Nations has not prescribed any conditions for the global negotiations at Bali.”
The Bali conference of world leaders on new climate change mechanism is starting from December 3. Pacahuri’s statement could stir a hornet’s nest.
He also said the first firm step on climate change has to be taken by the developed world. “I see no reason why developing countries should accept any commitments.”
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His views are similar to those of the Indian government, which wants only developing countries to show voluntary involvement in reducing carbon emissions.
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His views are similar to those of the Indian government, which wants only developing countries to show voluntary involvement in reducing carbon emissions.
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The UNDP has based its recommendations on its finding that 40 per cent of the world’s poor would be the worst sufferers because of climate change. It said there is less than a decade left to take firm action.
Even Pachauri agreed that after 2015, global carbon emissions should start falling to stabilise carbon concentration in the atmosphere at 450 ppm by 2050.
Keeping the carbon level at that point would not cost much — just 0.2 per cent annual loss of GDP. Still, it would lead to 2 to 2.4°C increase in temperature, leading to a 0.4-1.4-metre sea level rise. This would pose a huge danger to island nations and low-lying areas in eastern coastal India and Bangladesh.
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.
