India offers equity principle meet in run up to Cancun

In the run up to the Cancun summit on climate change in December, India has offered to hold an international conference to deliberate the issue of principle of cumulative per capita emissions being embedded in the draft of the long-term deal.

“India would be delighted to host a meeting before Cancun (in Mexico) to enable this discussion (to arrive at an operational set of formulae on equity based primarily on cumulative per capita emissions),” Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said at the recently concluded seventh meeting of Major Economic Forum in Rome.

“Hopefully we can make tangible progress on this by Cancun and in Cancun. Let us work together collectively to ensure that Cancun becomes an equity-based conference and not one that gives a burial to it,” he said.

To firm up their stand on the issue, the BASIC Group comprising of India, Africa, China and Brazil are meeting in Rio de Janeiro in late-July where they will attend a workshop to deliberate equity related matters.

“These are important discussions and we must now bring these concrete proposals from the margins into the core of our negotiations. If only lip service continues to get paid to equity, and if we pay obeisance to it only in words and think we have addressed the issue, I am afraid that no international agreement will be possible,” Mr. Ramesh noted.

His comments came in the backdrop of the developed nations attempt to move for a global cap on emission without spelling out how the burden to maintain a certain temperature level would be shared.

Even as India has announced that poverty alleviation and economic development remain as its highest priorities, it has taken considerable steps to cut its domestic emission in merely six months after Copenhagen climate meet in Denmark December last year.

These include setting up of an expert group on a low carbon strategy for inclusive growth, a ‘Carbon Tax’ on coal to fund clean energy, Approval of National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency, National Solar Mission, Green Mission, National Mission on Sustainable Habitat (NMSH) and release of India’s national GHG inventory 2007.

Source:- www.thehindu.com