India stands by Copenhagen Accord on climate action: PM
05 Feb 2010
India will push the Copenhagen Accord forward despite the limited achievements at the discussions that took place at Copenhagen, prime minister Manmohan Singh said today.
"It is important to ensure that we can deliver what we promise to do," said the PM, adding that an ambitious agreement that is observed only in its breach will discredit the whole process.
Addressing the inaugural session of the 10th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit in New Delhi today, the prime minister said the Copenhagen accord "is a catalogue of voluntary commitments and not a negotiated set of legal obligations."
He said India has targeted to reduce emissions intensity of its GDP by 20-25 per cent by 2020 on 2005 basic levels. The government is also very serious about fulfilling and perhaps even exceeding this target, he added.
However, he reminded that climate action in India as also in other developing countries has to be combined with their central developmental goals.
"In a poor country like India, where hope and deprivation co-exist, sustainable development requires that the needs of the present are given at least as much attention as the needs of the future," he pointed out.
