India will adopt a responsible stance on sustainable development: PM

New Delhi, Feb 7 : Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh today said that India will adopt a responsible and forward looking stance on promoting sustainable development.

Delivering the inaugural address at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2008 here, Dr. Singh said the impact of climate change falls differently on people and the poor are the worst hit.

"We need technology innovations for reduction of energy use by industry and other user sectors," he said.

"We need massive action for afforestation, drought proofing, flood protection and the need to protect our coastal areas and glaciers that feed our river systems," he added.

Dr. Singh emphasized the need to ensure an acceptable standard of living for all our people following sustainable path for that development. Climate justice must, therefore, inform all efforts at international collaboration in act of human solidarity.

"The summit has become an important event in the annual calendar for all those who are committed to finding a globally acceptable and socially inclusive solution to the problems of climate change and outlining pathways to sustainable development," he said.

Speaking on climate change, Dr. Singh said that the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change is now working on a National Plan of Action for Climate Change.

"Even as we engage internationally in creating a global strategy to address climate change we would in parallel, work on local, sub national and national action to meet the challenges of climate change. A whole gamut of development action needs to be planned and funded," he added.

He added that the National Plan of Action on Climate Change would be released in June later this year.

The Prime Minister also said, we need to create knowledge partnerships across countries to collaborate on climate change action.

"India has decided to link all academic institutions that work on climate change on a national knowledge net and also identify key knowledge institutions that become centres of excellence in climate change related research. We are also considering setting up a Venture Capital Fund to promote green technologies," he said.

At the international level, he said: "We will continue to engage with all nations to strengthen global initiatives in the area of climate change.

"I am sure participants at this Summit will endorse India's stand because you are all concerned about poverty eradication and reducing global disparities in income and wealth. We cannot continue with a global development model in which some countries continue to maintain high carbon emissions, while the development options available for developing countries get constrained," he said..

At the end of his speech, Dr. Singh said by "climate justice" we mean a fair, equitable and transparent global regime for technology transfers.

"We in the developing world desperately need access to environment friendly technologies. Nations of the world will have to engage in the next two years to create a consensus on a new architecture for cooperation that involves both finance and technology support to countries for adaptation," he added.

The seminar is being hosted by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

"Effort by TERI is a glowing example of emerging trend of thought leadership that brings together ideas and people from across the world to collectively engage in this new struggle of human imagination over human predicament," he said.

ANI