India tells developed nations to reduce greenhouse gases

UNITED NATIONS: India has told the developed nations that the main responsibility for taking action to lessen the threat of climate change rests with them, stressing that reduction of greenhouse gas emission by them would have "potentially significant" effect on security by moderating the "impetus for privileged access" to energy markets.

But efforts to impose greenhouse gas commitments on developing nations would 'simply adversely impact' their prospects of growth, Indian Ambassador Nirupam Sen warned the Security Council as it debated the effect of climate change on security on Tuesday.

Sen joined several other ambassadors in questioning the competence of the 15-member Council to discuss the issue under the UN Charter.

The Council is mandated to take up the issues of peace and security and Sen told its members that a more immediate and 'quantifiable' threat is from possible conflicts arising out of inadequate resources for development and poverty eradication as well as competition for energy.

Stating that steps towards poverty eradication is the prerequisite for accelerated growth in developing countries, Sen asserted that mitigating the potential of conflict would have positive implications for global peace and security.

But British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, who chaired the special debate, disagreed with the argument that the issue was beyond the scope of the Council's mandate.

Britain, which holds the presidency for the month, had sought the debate.

Recent scientific evidence reinforced, or even exceeded, the worst fears about climate change, Beckett said, warning that migration on an unprecedented scale because of flooding, disease and famine could pose a major threat. She also said that drought and crop failure could cause intensified competition for food, water and energy.

Therefore, she said, climate change is a security issue, but it is not a matter of narrow national security, it was about "our collective security in a fragile and increasingly interdependent world".

By holding debate, the Council was not seeking to pre-empt the authority of other bodies, including the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council as some members had suggested, she said.

The decisions that they came to, and action taken, in all those bodies required the fullest possible understanding of the issues involved. "[So] climate change can bring us together, if we have the wisdom to prevent it from driving us apart," she said.