By Joydeep Gupta, IANS
New Delhi : India is now keener than before to tackle the menace of climate change, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Yvo de Boer said here Friday.
After his “brief interaction” with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Thursday, the top UN official on the issue of climate change said he felt that India was “more keen to tackle the issue”.
Speaking to IANS on the second day of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS), de Boer agreed that India’s national plan had been delayed from November 2007 to March and now to June this year. But he said: “It must be a very complicated exercise. In a country of India’s complexity, you cannot have a one size fits all solution.”
On the eve of the three-day DSDS, de Boer had said Wednesday: “I know what India does not want to do. I now want to know what India does want to do” to tackle climate change.
Climate change is already affecting farm output, worsening frequency and severity of droughts, floods and storms and raising sea levels worldwide.
The man at the centre of fractious negotiations that started after the last UN climate conference at Bali in December said he did not expect any breakthrough till the end of the two-year deadline to finalise a new international treaty to tackle climate change.
“In this matter, nothing falls into place unless everything falls into place.”
Over the next 22 months, de Boer expects countries around the world to continue setting up their positions at various negotiating forums. Industrialised countries want major developing countries like China, India, Brazil and South Africa to take on mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction commitments after 2012, when the current international treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, expires.
Developing countries, led by India, have been stoutly resisting this, as they feel this would constrain their development, mainly in the fields of power generation and improving transport availability. They want industrialised countries to finance action against climate change instead, and also to provide necessary technology at low cost.
Extra greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, in the earth’s atmosphere have led to climate change. Industrialised countries are responsible for almost all GHG emissions so far, although now China and India have become the fourth and fifth largest emitters in the world.
The US, the world’s largest GHG emitter, has not signed the Kyoto Protocol and has been at the forefront of asking developing countries to take on emission reduction commitments.
Asked if he saw any shift in this position of the Bush administration, de Boer took a long pause and said: “There may be some change coming. After all, President (George W.) Bush did start an initiative last year. And in my experience, once you start an initiative, you have to show results.”
Japan largely followed the US line during the Bali summit, and is hosting the next G-8 summit where Bush has planned another meet on climate change. Queried on whether he expected anything concrete out of that summit, de Boer said: “It will be very interesting to see what Japan does.”