By Joydeep Gupta, IANS
Bali (Indonesia) : India is under immense pressure from Canada and Japan to make mandatory cuts in its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that warm the earth’s atmosphere and is leading to climate change. Britain and Germany are also pressuring India, though not as much.
The 12-day United Nations Conference on Climate Change opened at this picturesque island with the 187 countries in attendance and the UN declaring in public that developing nations will not be asked to make legally binding commitments to cap or cut GHG emissions in a post-2012 world, when the current agreement on climate change – the Kyoto Protocol – comes to an end.
But behind closed doors, “Canada has asked India to reduce its GHG emissions by 20 percent within 2050”, Director General of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) in the Ministry of Power Ajay Mathur told IANS.
Mathur, who is a member of the Indian government delegation at the Bali summit, also said: “Japan has asked India to agree to industry-wise emission targets that would be the same across all countries”. In such a scenario, a 500 MW power generating station, for example, would be permitted to emit the same amount of carbon dioxide – the principal GHG – whether it was located in Japan, India or any other country.
India had very clearly rebuffed the pressure from Canada and Japan, Mathur said. “There is no question of agreeing to any of this. We need energy for development, and we wonder where Canada got its 20 percent figure. It is the same figure as proposed by the UNDP (UN Development Programme) in its latest Human Development Report.”
Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia trashed this aspect of the report even while he was releasing it in New Delhi on Nov 27.
Britain and Germany, on their part, wanted India to set “energy efficiency targets”, Mathur said. “We are all for energy efficiency,” he added, “but we’re not going to set mandatory targets for this.”
Mathur pointed out that industrialised countries were really in no position to put pressure on developing countries, “because their own greenhouse gas emissions are now 11 percent above 1990 levels, instead of being five percent below, as they had promised in the Kyoto Protocol”.
So promises of making mandatory cuts in GHG emissions really do not mean much. Instead, it would be much better to immediately start negotiations that would enable all countries to reduce GHG emissions, Mathur said. “We are a strong supporter of the process to have negotiations. We want it to start now.”
This position had been articulated at the opening session of the Bali summit Monday on behalf of the Group of 77 countries and China by Pakistan, the current co-chair of G-77. “We’re in complete agreement with that,” Mathur said.
“India is in favour of a strong carbon market,” The BEE chief said. “It has helped new technology become mainstream.” The carbon market is part of the mechanism by which industrialised countries pay developing countries to reduce global GHG emissions. Mathur said India wanted the carbon market to be “made broader, with reduced transaction costs”.
The 187 countries here for the climate change summit are discussing how to operationalise the Adaptation Fund, which is meant to pay developing countries adapt to the global warming that is already here, and is affecting agricultural output and water supply, apart from increasing frequency and intensity of droughts, storms and floods and raising sea levels.
Mathur said India wanted the Adaptation Fund to be brought to the “centre of the debate” on climate change, and for the fund to be öperationlised before we leave Bali”.
The current proposal is to have the Global Environment Facility (GEF) of the World Bank administer this fund. This had earlier been opposed by some developing countries, who feel they do not have a strong enough voice at the World Bank and therefore at the governing council of GEF.
Mathur said India was indifferent to who administered the Adaptation Fund, “as long as it reports to the CoP (conference of parties) to the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) rather than the GEF governing council”as had been decided at an earlier UNFCCC meeting.
India may not use much of the Adaptation Fund itself, Mathur said, “because we already have budgeted for adaptation in the 11th (five year) plan (2007-2012). We are already spending 2.5 percent of our GDP on adapting to climate change. But we may carry out some flagship projects to help other developing countries.”
In the first two days of the conference, did India raise the proposal first made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the G-8 summit in Berlin this June – by which India committed to cap its per capita GHG emissions at the same level as that of industrialised countries?
“We haven’t had the chance yet,” Mathur said, “but we’ll do it whenever necessary. It’s a wonderful concept, by which we tell the developed countries – the more challenging your target, the more challenging out target”.