No legally binding treaty till implications are clear: India

India on Saturday said it was 'not against legally binding treaty' but will not agree to any such instrument till its implications were clear.

Updated on: Dec 4, 2011, 24:16:42 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Durban

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

India on Saturday said it was 'not against legally binding treaty' but will not agree to any such instrument till its implications were clear.

The statement from Indian chief climate negotiator and special secretary in environment ministry J M Mauskar came a day after China agreed for a legally binding climate treaty after 2020 in a bid to fuel the slow pace of negotiations at Durban.

The week-long climate talks at Durban has revolved around the debate over legally binding nature of future climate treaty. The European Union, small island nations and least developed countries have sought a legally binding climate instrument having varying climate mitigation actions for countries depending on their emissions.

"We are not against a legal treaty," Mauskar said and added a word of caution that just a legal treaty with weak emission reduction pledges of rich natons will not make any difference to climate mitigation.

When asked whether India was under pressure to agree to legally bindinding treaty, Mauskar retorted that there were "more rumours than rooms" in ICC (International Convention Centre) at Durban and one should not believe them.

Opposing any new process to discuss future climate treaty, India made it clear that Durban climate talks have to deliver second commitment period for existing climate treaty Kyoto Protocol and failure on the issue will severely damage the confidence of the developing countries in the international processes.

"We are deeply concerned that there has been hardly any progress on achieving this key objective of our negotiations," he said.

Talks on Kyoto Protocol are stuck and there is already a talk that it cannot be ratified before January 2013. The first commitment period of the protocol ends on December 31, 2012. Most observers say death sentence for Kyoto will be delivered in Durban.

In this backdrop, Mauskar's statement is seen as a push to save Kyoto, which allows flow of finance from rich countries to the developing world through carbon trade mechanism. In this, rich countries can meet their emission reduction targets by buying carbon credits from the developing world through a market mechanism. India has most carbon credits in the world after China.

"We need a qualititively robust outcome to the Kyoto discussions, not a pro-forma one which does not meet the aspirations of the development world," the statement read.

Amid the concern that Durban will fail to deliver, the least developed nations proposed on Friday a set of parallel treaties that will not only take into account emissions reduction targets for the rich countries but also for non-Kyoto countries like the United States and emerging economies like China and India.

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

Get the latest headlines from US news and global updates from Pakistan, Nepal, UK, Bangladesh, Russia and US Iran war Live, get all the latest headlines in one place on Hindustan Times.