India should not expect world to fund its low-carbon strategy: Jairam Ramesh

It would be “foolish” for India to expect that its low-carbon strategy would be financed by the world, says Jairam Ramesh, former Union Minister for Environment and Forests. India should reduce carbon emissions in “our own interests,” he says.

It was reported recently that the Chief Economic Adviser, Dr Arvind Subramanian, had sent a note to the Prime Minister’s Office, saying India should not be demanding global funds for its programmes.

“That is what I said in 2009. I agree with Arvind,” Ramesh told Business Line, when asked for a reaction to the CEA’s recommendation. Jairam Ramesh, as the Minister then, India’s chief negotiator at the climate talks at Copenhagen, in 2009.

Calling Subramanian’s advice a “pragmatic approach”, Ramesh observed that it made political sense to bat for making global climate finance to be made available first to small island nations (which are the most vulnerable to climate change effects) and Africa.

“We don’t have many friends among the African nations,” he said, observing that those countries see India as a part of the problem than of solution, because India is the fourth biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. (However, on per capita basis, India’s record is not so bad.)

If India continues on business-as-usual basis, it will be the world’s second largest polluter by 2030, said Ramesh.

He said that he expected India’s commitments at the forthcoming Paris conference to stand on four pillars: a) commitment to reduce emission intensity (CO2 emissions per unit of GDP) to 30 per cent by 2025 and 40 per cent by 2030, over 2005 levels; b) improve energy efficiency by 20 per cent through the ‘perform, achieve, trade’ regime (which sets energy consumption norms for designated consumers with incentives for beating the norms and penalties for not meeting them); c) increase solar power generation capacity to 100 GW (from 4 GW now); and d) improving forest cover.

Ramesh said India could also commit to doing more if finance and technology was given (an approach that some countries, such as Mexico, have taken.)

Copenhagen to Paris

Ramesh observed that there were a number of fundamental changes in the ground situation between the Copenhagen talks of 2009 and the upcoming Paris talks this December. First, China and the US have come up with ambitious commitments for reducing emissions. In the case of the US, he said, the commitments were not as much as the world wanted, but nevertheless ambitious from a US standpoint.

Second, “the notion that we can take international commitments for emission reduction has been accepted in India,” Ramesh said, recalling that he was widely criticised in 2009, when he called for voluntary reduction in emission intensity. He called this “a big change.”

Third, there is now a universal consensus on limiting global warming to 2 degrees over 1850 reference levels. Finally, “there is a grudging consensus” that emission reductions commitments should be based on ‘bottom-up approach’ (meaning, voluntary commitments by nations, as opposed to one that is imposed by an agreement.)

Asked if he expected success at Paris-the Copenhagen conference was a failure-Ramesh said, “Paris is gastronomically a better place than Copenhagen.”

Background

Climate conferences are held each year under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This year’s conference is expected to be epochal, given the urgency of hammering out an agreement to do something before it is too late to slowdown and halt mankind-caused climate change. A major global deal is expected to be negotiated which might say what each country would do and how the efforts will be funded.

A key element of this year’s negotiations is the concept of INDC, an idea mooted in the 2013 Warsaw conference. The INDC represents a ‘bottom-up approach’, as it means each country will say how much of greenhouse gas emissions it would reduce from the year 2020 and the commitments will be legally-binding. It is post-2020 because, up till 2020 many countries already have their emission reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol.

India is among the top three polluting countries in the world, along with USA and China, though India is the 10{+t}{+h} in terms of carbon dioxide emissions per person.

(per capita greenhouse gas missions in 2011…in tonnes)

Source: World Resources Institute

India is the only country among the leading emitters that has not yet come up with its commitments. The Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Prakash Javdekar, recently said in the Parliament that India is working on its INDCs and would announce them soon.

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