India wants equity to be central to new climate deal

India on Wednesday said that equity should be applicable to all areas under the new climate agreement which is under discussion and not just for reducing emissions.

Updated on: Dec 5, 2012, 23:19:57 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Doha

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India on Wednesday said that equity should be applicable to all areas under the new climate agreement which is under discussion and not just for reducing emissions.

“Equity does not mean limitation. It applies to all sectors but it is a challenge to enforce it across all sectors,” said R Rashmi, joint secretary in the ministry of environment and forest and India's climate negotiator at Doha.

Speaking at a side event organised by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) at Doha climate conference, Rashmi elaborated why equity as a founding principle of the new climate deal, to be readied by 2015 and implemented from 2020, was essential not just for India but all developing countries. “Equity may have different meanings for different parties but everyone (all developing countries) wants it,” he said.

India had intervened on Wednesday to bring equity back on the negotiating table linked with key other issues of concern such as copyright in clean technologies and empty shell in technology transfer mechanism and green climate fund.

When asked whether India made a mistake by not getting equity explicitly included in the Durban decision for a new agreement, Rashmi talked out compulsions of multilateral negotiating process. “Everybody wanted the biggest historical emitter United States to be part of the deal in 2020,” he said, adding that principle of equity flows from the principles of the convention mentioned in the Durban platform.

Sunita Narian, director general of CSE, however, suggested to Rashmi that India should walk out of Doha if equity fails to find place in the agreements. “Walk out of Doha. No deal without equity,” she said, even as Rashmi expressed hope of a good deal in Doha. He did not reply to walk-out proposition.

The veteran Indian negotiator said that there has been a lot of progress on second commitment period for existing climate treaty, Kyoto Protocol, and hoped that differences in resource mobilization would be sorted out with minister from Switzerland and South Africa talking to representatives of different regional groups.

Rashmi also agreed that climate decisions were more linked with political considerations than evidence from science and environmental concerns. He was of the view that more scientific work needs to be done in emerging aspects of climate change to bring political acceptability. Most of scientific research is based in western countries reflecting their point of view, thereby unbalancing the negotiations in favour of the rich nations.

Narian earlier in a presentation pointed out importance of equity in climate negotiations and explained that the principle to first pollute and then clean-up was not an acceptable solution. “The developed world which has historically polluted needs to pay for the developing countries to leapfrog into clean technologies,” she said, a view held by many negotiators of the developing world.

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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