India Voices its inability to accept emissions' limitation targets

Washington, Sep 28 (UNI) External Affairs Minister of India Pranab Mukherjee has expressed India's inability to take on quantitative target of emissions limitation, saying this would be counter productive and have a negative effect on our development process.

Moreover, the time is not ripe for such a move, he told the Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change, hosted by President Bush here yesterday. Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice was in the chair.

Stressing the need for India's rapidly growth at around 8% to 10% each year in the coming decades, he said the country required to substantially increase per-capita electricity consumption and cannot compromise with this requirement.

Rapid economic growth and concomitant energy production and electricity consumption will increase CO2 emissions, he said.

Mukherjee, however, said, we are determined that even as we pursue economic growth, our per-capita GHG (Green House Gas) emissions will not increase beyond those of the industrialised countries.

He said any long term solution to climate change requires the development and diffusion of technologies for adaptation. We would urge research&development in clean technologies that could be advanced through programmes of collaborative R&D between institutions in developed and developing countries.

The sharing of IPRs is crucial.

He called for a fair balance between rewards to the innovator, and the global imperative of sustainable development, to ensure large-scale deployment of advanced, clean technologies.

The minister made out a strong case of dispensing with the Technology control regimes for advanced clean technologies.

Standards and priorities should reflect the developmental context to which they apply, he added.

Seventeen leaders from the United Nations and rest of the world were invited to the conference which is part of the new initiative which President Bush announced at the G-8 Leaders Conference in May 2007 to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing energy security and efficiency, and promoting strong economic growth.

UNI