No bailouts for climate crisis: Pranab

Warning that there are no bailouts for a climate crisis, India on Thursday told developed nations not to cite the current financial crisis as an excuse to renege on their commitments to address global warming.
    
"There are no bailouts for a climate crisis. The financial crisis should not become an excuse for developed countries to renege on their commitments," external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee said here inaugurating the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS).

"Climate change should also not be an excuse to add a greater burden or impose conditionalities onto the development challenges that developing countries face," he said.

Noting that the response to the financial crisis demonstrated that the international community can work together, Mukherjee said climate change provided an unique opportunity for joint action.
    
"The large amounts of public funds that are being deployed to address the financial crisis is a testimony to the fact that we can, given the requisite political will, generate similar funds to tackle climate change," he said.
    
Mukherhee said that a large part of these funds could be mobilised to support a major collaborative effort between developed and developing countries to deal with climate change.

Mukherjee suggested that a global fund could be created to promote renewable energy, both in terms of application of existing technologies as well as R&D into new and innovative technologies.
    
He said adequate finance has to be made available to the developing countries to facilitate their move towards a low carbon pathway.

"We should ensure that these funds are new and additional without diverting already scarce development assistance," Mukherjee said.

Economic development is critical for developing countries to ensure that they have adequate resources to cope and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change, he said.

"We, in India, are extremely concerned about climate change especially as, being a developing country, we are most likely to be adversely impacted," he said.

"All indications point out to the fact that we, as developing countries would have to bear a disproportionately severe impact of its adverse effects even though responsibility lies with those countries which have been polluting since industrialisation began," Mukherjee said.

Noting that poverty eradication and rapid economic development have remained India's priority, he said environment protection cannot be isolated from the general issue of development.