Ramesh stand earns praise abroad, ire at home

Brickbats at home and accolades abroad. This is what environment minister Jairam Ramesh has earned from his bold decision to alter India's climate policy and accept legally binding commitment. Chetan Chauhan reports. Jairam's full interview | Volte face | Cancun vs Copenhagen | Possible agreements

Updated on: Dec 11, 2010, 24:34:22 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Cancun

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Brickbats at home and accolades abroad. This is what Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh has earned from his bold decision to alter country climate policy and accept legally binding commitment.

“All countries must agree to a legally binding commitment under an appropriate legal form,” Ramesh said as he surprised his own negotiators at the 16th global climate summit on Wednesday.

Ramesh received first applause from the the Association of Small Island Nations, a group of 43 nations, which had been asking for legally binding commitments for all nations to reduce emissions in a bid to keep global temperature within two degree Celsius.

The island nations with European Union had floated a proposal aimed at forcing India and China to accept binding commitments stating that there should be a single legally binding agreement, which can have some elements of the Kyoto Protocol.

The one-page text was for consideration of the 16th Conference of Parties indirectly suggested junking of the protocol as the European Commissioner Connie Hedegaard had expressed willingness to give conditional support for its extenson.

Ramesh's statement aimed at ending the logjam and turn India into a deal-maker had helped in wider acceptance of the proposal of island nations.

The Europeans have also welcomed India's new stand and expressed hope that China will follow suit. United States for the long had been seeking a single binding agreement for all countries.

A day after the Ramesh's statement most countries agreed to have legally binding commitments as part of the Cancun Declaration, expected to be announced on Friday night.

Back home, Ramesh, who is being considered as a deal maker in Cancun, had earned the opposition's ire. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking the Centre to consult the chief ministers before altering India's climate change policy.

Accusing Ramesh of altering the policy at will, the BJP leader Modi said 70 percent of mitigation and adaptation work is done at the state government level and not including them in the consultation process for the policy change will be against India's federal governance system.

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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