Emphasising the need to tackle climate change that is fast gripping the world, the United Nations said developed as well as developing countries should attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emission levels, which could otherwise lead to food insecurity, water stress, exposure to climate disasters and negative impact on human health and extreme weather conditions.
?What is at stake is the very survival of life,? said Maxine Olson, UNDP Resident Representative and UN Resident Coordinator. She was releasing the Human Development Report – 2007/2008, which focuses on climate change. She said a part of the challenge was to make people adapt to climate change while the other part was to devise mitigation strategies. The Report suggests that funds worth $86 billion would be required for developing adaptation mechanism by 2016.
UNDP policy specialist Ricardo Fuentes Nieva said developed countries should cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050 and developing nations should aim at emissions trajectory that peaks in 2020, with 20% cut by 2050. He said the overall ?global carbon budget? is to achieve 14.56 giga tonnes (gt) carbon dioxide (CO2) a year for the 21st century from the present level of 29 gt per annum.
Speaking at the conference, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said while the report makes important contribution but does not put forth an adequate measure on the basis of which practical negotiations?between developed and developing countries?to reduce emissions can take place. He said the developed and developing country framework suggested by UNDP to cut emissions ?looks egalitarian, but it is not.?
He said the measures to reduce emissions should be conceived on the basis of per capita emission levels rather than absolute levels. ?Any simulation that is conceived on the basis of absolute numbers is fundamentally wrong,? he said. ?This is my only quarrel with the otherwise excellent report.?
Ahluwalia said the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has suggested the per capita framework at the G-8 countries summit in Heiligendamm (Germany) in June this year. He stressed the idea point as the policies to reduce emissions that might follow using the per capita approach could be significantly different from those using developed and developing country framework based on absolute numbers of the UNDP.