A day after environment minister Jairam Ramesh said at the UN convention in Cancun that India would consider a binding treaty on fighting climate change, he received flak from virtually the entire Opposition and several NGOs for the policy shift. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also tried to pacify those rattled by Ramesh?s statement at the plenary of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change by asking them ?not to read too much into the statement.? Singh said this on Friday in Brussels, where he is attending an India-EU summit.
Reacting to Ramesh?s statement, leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said: ?The BJP does not accept the altered position. It is against national interest… We want the latest position to be reversed.? Jaitley added: ?The last word should always be of the Prime Minister. Therefore, we want the PM to tell us whether this is the position of the government of India.?
The government has been all along maintaining that ?India cannot and will not? take on internationally legally-binding emission reduction targets.
In the meantime, Ramesh tried to assuage concerns, saying it was merely a nuancing of New Delhi’s position for it to remain relevant in the climate negotiations that hardly amounted to an overstepping of the mandate given to him by the Parliament.
Late last year, in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit, which produced an ?accord? on climate change but not a treaty, Ramesh said in Parliament that India can only voluntarily reduce the carbon intensity of its GDP as per a formula, rather than take any binding commitment to reduce emissions. This position, it was stated, was in keeping with the need to keep enough development space for India, a fast-growing economy with tremendous energy needs. What Ramesh said in Cancun was that India was ready to look at a binding deal ? but not right away. ?All countries must take binding commitments under an appropriate legal form,? he had said. The minister further said New Delhi would want to see how a treaty in this regard would finally shape up. It is anxious to know if the treaty would provide for penalties for non-compliance or a monitoring system.
The CPI(M) said in a statement: ?The stand taken by environment minister Jairam Ramesh at the climate change conference in Cancun that India is willing to commit to legally binding emission cuts is a blatant shift from India?s stand.? It pointed out: ?The UPA government had assured Parliament that India would not accept any such binding commitments.? The shift in the policy has been also criticised by the Centre for Science and Environment, a leading NGO, which said: ?This is the beginning of the process which will lead to removal of distinctions between developing and developed countries, which is the cornerstone of the UNFCCC.? The UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol don’t require developing countries to take legally binding commitments. BJP spokesperson Prakash Javedkar said: ?It’s a unilateral decision which has weakened India’s negotiating position. India is buckling under pressure from the US, which itself has not undertaken any commitments.? He added: ?It will have an impact on the economy. We are scared.? Earlier, Gujarat’s BJP chief minister Narendra Modi wrote to the PM asking for chief ministers to be consulted before changes in the climate change policy.