India to Combat Climate Change Without Waiting for Funds
By Gaurav Singh
India will go ahead with its plans to combat climate change without waiting for global finance as nations prepare for fresh talks after failing to agree on a binding global treaty at Copenhagen last month.
“We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do,” Jairam Ramesh, environment minister in the world’s fourth-biggest polluter from burning fossil fuels, said in an interview in New Delhi today. “I don’t see India’s climate change program being driven by international finance. International finance has its supportive role to play, it doesn’t have a lubricating or a catalytic or a start-up role.”
The Copenhagen Accord set a Jan. 31 deadline for rich nations to specify 2020 emission targets and poorer countries to state actions being taken to curb greenhouse gases. The agreement also pledges $100 billion a year by 2020 for developing countries to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change.
India, along with the U.S., China and Brazil, was among the countries that declared plans in the Danish capital to slow emissions blamed by scientists for global warming.
Australia, Canada, Papua New Guinea and the Maldives have told the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that they support the Copenhagen Accord, John Hay, the spokesman of the UN agency, said yesterday. Cuba is the only nation so far to say it doesn’t want to be associated with the plan.
India won’t offer any new measures to combat climate change, the minister said.
Doing the Job
“Whatever we had to say, we’ve said,” Ramesh said. “Now we have to just get on with the job of doing it. The real challenge is to see how the Copenhagen accord, which was entered into by 29 countries, becomes anchored in the UNFCCC process.”
The accord has been criticized by environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth and carbon traders including Barclays Capital because no binding targets were set. It calls for more talks in preparation for a treaty to respond to global warming by capping emissions and expanding the $126 billion-a-year carbon market, according to the text.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who traveled to Copenhagen, said this month nations made “limited progress” at the summit and no one was satisfied with the outcome.
“There is no escaping the truth that the nations of the world have to move to a low greenhouse gas emissions and energy efficient development path,” Singh said on Jan. 3.
Emmanuel Fages, a Paris-based analyst at Orbeo, said last month there is only a 30 percent chance that countries will be ready by the end of January to publish steps for carbon dioxide reductions in the coming decade. Orbeo is Societe Generale SA’s carbon-trading venture with Rhodia SA.
