Industry body Ficci has asked the Prime Minister not to shift positions on climate change at the Copenhagen Summit from the original stand of fixing responsibility of cutting greenhouse gas emissions on a per capita basis.
"We are alarmed by reports that the government may change its stance on the principle that emission of all countries should converge on per capita basis.
"We strongly suggest that per capita emission remains the basis for greenhouse gas emission reduction," Ficci president Harsh Pati Singhania said in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma.
Singhania said the Prime Minister had also supported the principle of per capita emission cuts when he spoke recently at the Delhi High Level Conference on Climate Change, Technology Development and Transfer.
"It is important that India and other developing economies push for a climate change regime that has convergence of greenhouse gas emissions on equal per capita basis worldwide," he said.
Singh will be attending the climate summit beginning tomorrow along with a galaxy of world leaders including US president Barack Obama.
India being the second most populous country, its per capita emission works out to its favour at 1.2 tonne annually against 20 tonne in the US.
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh was recently quoted as saying that the per capita emission reduction norms cannot remain the only plank for Indian negotiators. He described the country's low emission on this basis as "a historical accident only because of huge population".
Ficci said industry does not support any outcome for India that is based on legally binding emission reduction targets.
"We will not accept sectoral benchmarks or targets at a globally harmonised level as such targets would adversely affect the competitiveness of Indian industry," it said.
The chamber also asked the government to push for commitments from the developed world on technology transfer and finance to meet the objectives of greenhouse gas mitigation as well as adaptation to climate change.
Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone are the main culprit behind global warming.
