India's vision on climate change
Government of India’s report Climate Change Negotiations: India’s submissions to the UNFCCC encapsulates the country's position. It highlights the need for establishing mechanism for the development and transfer of technologies and sustainable forest management.
Publisher: Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, August 2009
UNFCCC is working to reach an agreed outcome on climate change at Copenhagen in December 2009. The climate change discourse covers a wide range of issues that include a shared vision for long term cooperation under the Convention, adaptation to and mitigation of climate change and provision of technology and financing for addressing climate change.
As part of these negotiations, India has expressed its views on several issues, in particular the issues affecting developing countries. It has also put forward proactive submissions to the UNFCCC on various issues.
The twelve (12) papers contained in this publication encapsulate the major submissions made by India on the relevant topics in the course of the negotiations during 2008 and 2009.
In this compilation, the submission on each subject begins with a narrative statement followed by a text suggested for inclusion in the negotiating text.
The suggested text does not imply that an agreement has been reached on the text. The negotiations are still continuing and the text is under development through discussion amongst the Parties.
The document stresses that developing countries cannot be denied access to their equitable share of the global atmospheric resource and carbon space.
Equitable sharing of the carbon space, therefore, needs to be urgently agreed to by the international community. As far as India is concerned it stated that the per-capita emissions will not exceed those of developed countries.
In order to send out a clear signal of the urgency and magnitude of the climate change problem the international community should start identifying an indicative stabilisation target and a timeframe for its achievement.
It suggests all the annex countries to adopt targets for reduction of their emissions by more than 25-40% by 2020, with further reductions through policies and measures that promote sustainable lifestyles from the 1990 baseline.
