G8 can't impose climate targets on India: PM

New Delhi, June 10 (UNI) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has bluntly told the G8 industrialised nations that they cannot impose on India any targets on checking greenhouse gas emissions as the ''time is not ripe'' for such a move.

''Of course there are demands on countries like China, India, Brazil to also accept obligations to reduce green house gas emissions and we said we have not come here to discuss targets or accept internationally enforced targets on us,'' Dr Singh told reporters yesterday, while returning from Germany after attending the summit of G8 with five outreach partners. South Africa and Mexico were the other outreach nations.

Outrightly rejecting another move (of the US) to thrust climate-related targets on India and China, Dr Singh made it obvious that the per capita emissions of developing countries were not even a fraction of GHG released into the atmosphere by the industrialised nations.

''I said well, developing countries accept their responsibilities.

As an instance we could assure the world that at no time, our per capita emissions will exceed that of the Developed countries,'' he said.

At present, India's per capita GHG emissions are only 23 per cent of the global average, four per cent of the US, 12 per cent of Europe and 15 per cent of Japan.

Going by Dr Singh's statement that per capita emissions of developing countires would never be allowed to exceed that of their affluent counterparts, it is clear that India and other emerging powers could go ahead with their rapid economic progress for decades before coming across the necessity of taking measures to check climate change.

However, the Prime Minister said, ''This will act as a two-way incentive. If the Developed countries do more to reduce their green house gas emissions per capita, we will also reward them by doing more. For the first time I floated this idea. Yesterday, in my bilateral meetings when I elaborated on this, (German) Chancellor (Angela) Merkel said, Well this is an idea which has very important positive implications and which need to be looked into. So this is important outcome of our meeting with G8.'' The developing countries did recognise that the whole world shared a similar environment and if environment deteriorated, and if essential life support system of our planet was adversely affected, ''we also suffer in some ways more than many other countries.'' But any responsibility imposed on any country must be in accordance with accepted Kyoto Principles that countries ''have equal but differentiated responsibilities depending upon their capabilities.'' Further, while anybody was free do discuss issues of climate change in a way various fora, the central role must be that of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto processes must not in any way be adversely affected.

''I am glad that on that particular point there was some doubt that the G8 want to take this issue out of the UN. And at our persistence, Chancellor Merkel reaffirmed that there is no part of their thinking to side track the UN in the management of global climate change. In that sense, it was a positive gain of our participation with other outreach countries.'' ''We have been doing to protect our environment, to promote energy efficiency, to promote the use of renewable sources of energy. May be we could do more, we shall do more, but time is not ripe to fix any quantitative targets as far as we are concerned,'' the Prime Minister said.

UNI