India no to Tuvalu plan, talks to US, G77+China

Copenhagen, Dec. 11: The minister for environment and forests, Mr Jairam Ramesh, arrived in Copenhagen and immediately got into a negotiating stance with the United States, G77+China and the Africa group, three of the most important countries or groupings in climate change discussions.

Mr Ramesh’s meeting with the US delegation is important since the country has asked India to put its offer to reduce carbon intensity by 20 to 25 per cent by 2020 as a legally, internationally binding commitment.

India has said that it was a domestic commitment made to parliament and that there was no question of internationalising the offer.

“We know the red lines, and these include not internationalising our plans or accepting any global monitoring or verification,” the additional secretary in the ministry of environment and forests, Mr J.M. Mauskar, earlier said. “That would be totally unacceptable.”

India has consistently said that its system was transparent enough to allow the results to be known by any one, but that it would put forward its domestic plans as international commitments.

These include the missions under the national action plan on climate change, of which the solar project was recently approved by the cabinet of ministers.

The secretary of environment and forests, Mr Vijai Sharma said that the stand of the US and the EU had been noted by India which would do what was best in its interest.

He said there were some issues which were not part of the negotiation process.

Mr Sharma also said that India was not in favour of the Tuvalu proposal which sought to get a stronger commitment from the developed world, while asking the developing countries too to do their bit to tackle climate change.

Tuvalu, a small island state in the Pacific, had tabled a motion to get a different agreement put in place in the climate negotiations.

The document was referred by the conference president, Ms Connie Hedegaard, to a group so that a consensus could emerge, suspending the plenary session of the climate conference.

The session will wait for the report on Saturday before resuming. other sessions are continuing.

Mr Sharma said it was too late in the day to introduce a substantive document which sought to change the parameters in this fashion.