UN targets on emission cut are flawed, says India

A UN report setting emission cut targets for developed and developing countries draws flak from India, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Nov 27, 2007, 23:55:10 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A United Nations report setting emission cut targets for developed and developing countries was trashed by the Planning Commission’s Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia. He called it “fundamentally misconceived” and not based on “equity.”

Within minutes of this sharp criticism, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) officials distanced themselves from the report. Maxie Olson, UNDP’s representative in India, said, “It is a scientific work for discussion purpose.”

The Human Development Report 2007 says South Asia, including the Gangetic plains, will suffer the most due to climate change — flooding, temperature variations will adversely affect agriculture and thereby push more and more people below the poverty line. For India, the report has not fared well, with its position falling by two ranks to 128 in the Human Development Index. “Human progress in other countries have been faster than in India, where progress has been steady in the last 30 years,” said Olson.

Ahluwalia said the stipulations in the report — of developed countries reducing emissions by 80 per cent and developing countries by 20 per cent by 2050 — looked egalitarian but, in fact, it was not. “If we consider per capita emissions, countries like India will have to bear bigger burden as per the UNDP recommendation. I would not call it fair,” he said. Instead, he said, developing countries should be allowed to increase their per capita emission and developed world should reduce it. He cited that in US per capita emission is 20 tonnes whereas in India, it is less than one.

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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