Montek blows hot on climate change recipe

UN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT

Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia virtually tore apart the latest Human Development report, which he released in New Delhi, saying the arguments it uses to show India as the fourth largest emitter of carbon dioxide and calling for emission cuts were false and unacceptable.

He rejected the recommendation of the report that "major emitters" in developing countries should aim at an emission trajectory that peaks in 2020 and leads to a 20 per cent cut by 2050.

He rejected the report's basis for projecting emission cuts till 2050 for industrialised and developing countries like India saying it was based on total emissions.

He said the report ignored Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's proposal at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm in Germany that carbon emissions should be measured on a per capita basis. This, he said, was a clear departure from India's earlier position that it would not commit to any emission cut. 
 

INDIA VERSUS UN
India: Per capita emissions must decide emission size	UN: Let rich countries double their cuts
India: Total emissions should decide	UN: Rich make 80% cuts by 2050
India: All nations must have per-capita emission caps	UN: Let rich nations do research and cut own emissions
India: Major emitters among poor make 20% cuts by 2050	UN: Rich can fund research in poor nations

The report, Ahluwalia said, omitted the possibility of measuring emissions on a per capita basis. He said cuts based on total emissions led to targets that were unfair to poor nations like India.

He said the present position of the UN that industrialised countries cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 and poor nations by 20 per cent looked egalitarian but was not so in reality.

The UN report also makes this recommendation. He said it could be seen that an 80 per cent reduction in the 20 million tonnes of carbon emissions by the US would still leave it with three million tonnes of emissions, but a 20 per cent cut in India's emissions, which were only 1 million tonnes, would leave it with less than 0.8 million tonnes.

He said the prime minister's argument was supported twice by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He said challenged the research team whose inputs went into the report to make projections based on the premises offered by India.

"It must do supplementary work," he said, adding, "The entire concept of major emitter was not acceptable."

He said it was not a UN category and for the first time in a UN report had major emitter been mentioned as a separate category. One can't have categories that fail to project universality of the principle, he said, adding that the basis for determining major emitters was not acceptable to India.

UNDP head Maxim Olsen defended the report and said its had succeeded in its purpose of generating a discourse.