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United States of America, India, Climate changeRELATED TOPICS

December 4, 2009 3:39 am

India opts for voluntary cuts on emissionsBy Amy Kazmin in New Delhi

India announced on Thursday it would reduce its carbon emissions intensity by 20-25 per cent of 2005 levels by 2020, but that the

reduction would be made voluntarily rather than as part of any legally binding international agreement to combat global warming.

Jairam Ramesh, the environment minister, told parliament that the reduction would be achieved by a series of measures. These include

mandating fuel efficiency standards for all vehicles by December 2011, legislating an energy-efficient building code and ensuring that

half of all new coal-fired power generation uses clean coal technology.

Such action would be part of a gradual transition to a low-carbon economy. Change, he said, was in Indias own self-interest, given its

vulnerability to global warming.

We are not doing the world a favour, he said. Forget Copenhagen. Forget the US. Our future as a society depends on how we respond

to the climate change challenge.

Mr Ramesh reaffirmed that New Delhi would not agree to any legally binding emissions targets, or a peak year for its emissions, calling

them non-negotiable. But he said India could modulate its rejection of international scrutiny of its domestic mitigation efforts not

supported by international finance or technology.

Greenpeace India welcomed the new targets. It said they moved India away from business as usual.

From 1990 until 2005, Indias emissions intensity fell by 17.5 per cent, and Greenpeace said the new targets would deviate notably

from that trajectory.

It s a positive step towards quantification of Indias action on climate change, said Ankur Ganguly, a Greenpeace spokesman. These

targets put pressure squarely back on the industrialised countries.

However, Malini Mehra, founder of the Centre for Social Markets, said India needed to change even faster, though she said that Mr

Rameshs speech was a turning point in the domestic debate. He has warmed parliament up to the fact that India is going to have to

start undertaking serious discussion about emissions cuts, she said.

Mr Ramesh, appointed environment minister after Mays Parliamentary elections, has been fighting to shift both Indian public

attitudes to climate change, and New Delhis international negotiating position on a deal to combat global warming.

New Delhi has long sought to deflect international pressure climate change by focusing on its low per capita emissions.

However, Mr Ramesh said India could not keep looking at the issue only through that prism, which he called an accident of history

reflecting Indias poor record at reducing its birth rate.

It is not a credit for us, he told parliament. Our single biggest failure in the last 60 years is our inability to control our population

growth rate.

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