Like China and Brazil, India is set to yield a little before the Copenhagen summit.
India may follow Brazil and China by announcing a 15-20% voluntary reduction in carbon intensity before the December 17-18 Copenhagen summit on climate change. What this means is that as opposed to an emission cut, India will pledge a reduction in carbon dioxide emitted per unit of gross domestic product.
A highly-placed source in the government who wished to remain anonymous said the proposal is under active consideration. “It is something that is doable provided we are careful how we do it and we get our sums right,” he said. “In terms of optics, an announcement may get us brownie points at Copenhagen.”
China has announced a voluntary 40-45% cut in carbon intensity over 2005 levels by the year 2020 while Brazil has committed itself to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 36-38% in the same time frame, a government source said.
Experts say it should not be a problem for India to quantify targets the way Brazil and China have.
It simply means a mathematical conversion of some of the energy efficiency goals already announced in the 2008 National Action Plan on Climate Change. Experts caution, however, that the sums need to be done very carefully otherwise India could end up at a disadvantage by setting impossible and controversial targets that would be disputed. This is the main reason why the government has shied away from setting quantitative targets like other countries. But the ongoing public relations war between nations in the run-up to the Copenhagen meet may force India’s hand.
The possibility of India changing tack in the international debate on climate change was first revealed by Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh. Much to the government’s discomfiture, he let the cat out of the bag with a premature comment from Beijing where he had gone over the weekend to attend a meeting of the G-4 nations. China had invited representatives from India, Brazil and South Africa to firm up the stand of the four major emerging economies before the Copenhagen conference. Ramesh was quoted as saying that India was ready to announce a 20 - 25% across-the-board cut in carbon intensity.
The “leak” of a move that is under consideration, but on which a final decision has not been taken, put the government in a spot and a gag order was hastily served on Ramesh.
The minister not only went underground in Beijing after that but on Monday, when he surfaced in New Delhi, he refused to talk on climate change at a press conference to release the national environment report.
Ramesh’s Beijing faux pas was particularly embarrassing for prime minister Manmohan Singh as it overshadowed his speech on climate change at the Commonwealth meet in Port of Spain. The PM not only reiterated India’s position on climate change in the speech but was very firm that India would accept global emission cuts only if they were equitable and came with commensurate financial and technological commitments from developed countries.
In the light of Ramesh’s off-the-cuff remarks from Beijing, the PM’s talk of emission cuts was misinterpreted, forcing his office to pre-empt a possible controversy with a clarification setting the record straight.
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