Pacific nations meet fails to end climate deadlock

India’s efforts to get other countries to back its stand on resisting binding carbon emission cuts suffered a setback this week after it failed to persuade 14 Pacific island nations with promises of development projects.

Updated on: Aug 22, 2015, 23:34:12 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

India’s efforts to get other countries to back its stand on resisting binding carbon emission cuts suffered a setback this week after it failed to persuade 14 Pacific island nations with promises of development projects.

Heads of Asia-Pacific countries, with delegates of the FIPIC summit, in Jaipur on Saturday. (PTI Photo)

At a summit in Jaipur, the island countries insisted that a climate pact to be signed in Paris this year should be legally binding with emerging economies like India and China taking emission cuts despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking their support to ensure a “balanced” and “fair” treaty.

“The Pacific nations were willing to discuss all climate issues including legally binding nature of the proposed climate agreement,” Anil Wadhwa, secretary east in the external affairs ministry, said after the end of the second Forum for India-Pacific Island Cooperation.

India opposed the binding nature of the proposed treaty to be implemented from 2020 and repeatedly said only rich countries are required under the UN climate convention to reduce carbon emissions.

External affairs ministry officials, however, said climate change was an emotive issue for the Pacific island nations and any change in the stand could have local political implications.

The island nations have pinned their hopes to the success of the Paris talks as rising sea levels threaten their very existence.

Environment minister Prakash Javadekar, who reportedly discussed climate issues with Modi on Saturday, is expected to address a press conference next week on India’s roadmap to curb carbon emissions as most states have already submitted their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), or pledges on climate change, to the ministry which is examining them.

China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter while India is fourth with per capita emissions one-third of China’s.

US President Barack Obama and Modi failed to strike a climate deal this year along the lines of a US-China agreement on emission cuts because of New Delhi’s resistance to accept a peak year for emissions which could have bracketed it with Beijing on the issue.

India and China issued a joint statement during Modi’s visit to the neighbouring country in May, asking wealthy nations to provide finance, technology and other necessary support to emerging economies to help reduce their own emissions.

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

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.