Doha: India attempts to bring equity and IPR back to central stage

Reviving its core concerns, India today valiantly raised the issue of equity, central to the climate deal and copyright in technology transfer, two issues perceived to be falling under the burden of finance and higher emission cuts for rich nations.

Updated on: Dec 5, 2012, 20:11:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Doha

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Reviving its core concerns, India on Wednesday valiantly raised the issue of equity, central to the climate deal and copyright in technology transfer, two issues perceived to be falling under the burden of finance and higher emission cuts for rich nations.

Mira Mehrishi, India’s head of climate negotiation at Doha, told ministers at a roundtable that the talks were gripped in a 'crises of confidence' and the central problem was implementing the commitments already made.

Plain-speaking, the additional secretary in the environment ministry said that no funds have flown into the Green Climate Fund created three years ago and there are no resources to make technology transfer mechanism functional and address the concerns over the copyright regime, which is preventing access to cost effective technologies.

"Technologies that can quickly address this challenge are protected by intellectual property right regime," she said, seeking a global mechanism to facilitate access to such technologies.

She also tried to allay the notion being spread by the rich nations that equity does no good, as the principle of historical responsibility for global warming causing emissions is fading with rising emission of the developing world. "Notion of equity is projected in historical responsibility and cannot be projected only in future," she added.

Sunita Narain, director general of Centre for Science and Environment, said that there could not be any future climate deal without equity being its foundation.

"Equity is central Rio principles under which the UN Convention on Climate Change was formulated. Equity in atmospheric space and finances from rich nations to the developing world is important to ensure that vulnerables nations can effectively fight climate change," she said at a side-event organized by CSE at the conference of 200 countries.

Receiving ample support from other developing countries, especially China, Mehrishi urged countries to implement rule based multi-lateral system for the second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol and a new deal to be applicable from 2020.

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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