No to climate apartheid

Environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan has done well to recast India`s position on climate change. In a signi-ficant departure from her predecessor, Jairam Ramesh, she has rightly emphasised equity as the key principle for future climate negotiations. Given that we cannot get to zero emissions right away with present-day technologies, the individual Indian should have as much right to carbon space as the individual American or European. At this point, the average American emits 19 times as much carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, as the average Indian.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had offered that India`s per capita emissions rate will at no point exceed that of developed countries. This is a fair offer – even a generous one given that India has fewer resources to acquire expensive but environment-friendly technologies. Emissions have got to do with energy use, and energy use has to do with prosperity and quality of life. While climate change is a serious concern, so is underdevelopment and poverty. India, therefore, cannot go further than Singh`s position now reinstated by Natarajan. Those who have polluted more in the past and continue to pollute more now, surely have the responsibility to make deeper cuts than developing countries. Anything else would amount to a form of environmental apartheid, with developed countries given a greater share of the environment`s resources.

It`s also noteworthy that Ramesh`s more flexible approach that saw India ready to make legally binding commitments at the same time as developed countries hasn`t worked. Since the Copenhagen meet in 2009 there has been little to suggest that countries such as the US are serious about emission mitigation commitments, even when India is prepared to go further than others. In such a scenario, Natarajan is correct to reinstate the Indian position prior to 2009.