India offers to adopt international guidelines to show flexibility on climate change
15 Dec 2009
India has underlined that it remains flexible in its climate change position with an offer to adopt the international guidelines under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) while at the same time reporting to Parliament on unsupported domestic efforts to deal with climate change.
With the move, the government, while at one level would be able to convey to global audiences that India's reporting would be at international standards, at another it would be able to tell the domestic audience that it had not submitted to international review.
According to environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, while India has agreed to a national communication once in two years for both supported and unsupported actions, for the unsupported efforts the monitoring would be domestic only. He added that the manner of domestic verification would be on the international guidelines as prepared by UNFCCC but there would be no international verification; only domestic evaluation by Parliament.
At the informal ministerial meeting held on Saturday and Sunday, Ramesh reiterated India's belief in the 'trimurti' of UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol and Bali Action Plan.
He added that India was not at Copenhagen to renegotiate agreement as the mandate enabled existing two track approach of Kyoto Protocol and the Longterm Co-operative Action - to move ahead. He said that the two tracks needed to be completed latest by 2010.
India remains opposed to any attempts to dilute the Kyoto Protocol, which Ramesh said had been stressed repeatedly during his meetings. He said that India was at Copenhagen to negotiate the launch of the second commitment period of 2013 to 2017 under the Kyoto Protocol, which was what was under discussion. He added that the developed nations would have to agree to it.
