When authoritative spokespersons of the government speak in different voices on an issue, what ensues is utter confusion. This is, indeed, the state of affairs regarding the government’s (read India’s) stand on climate change less than a month prior to the crucial global summit on this subject in Copenhagen. The divergent utterances by environment and forests minister Jairam Ramesh and Prime Minister’s special envoy on climate change Shyam Saran have created a good deal of ambiguity within and outside the country over the government’s strategy for these talks. Worse still, this confusion has been confounded by the release of a document by Ramesh on Himalayan glaciers which, inter alia, disputes the claim that these glaciers are shrinking fast and that this phenomenon was linked to global warming. Though this was basically a discussion paper, it has been deemed widely as the official stand on glaciers and, as such, has come under severe criticism from different quarters, including many of those thickly involved in glaciology research. This is regardless of the fact that while presenting the findings of the studies quoted in this discussion paper, Ramesh had also reportedly mentioned that the health of the glaciers was very poor and that while most of the glaciers in the Indian Himalayas were receding, some like the Siachen Glacier were advancing.
Such being the state of affairs, the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, seems to have done well to ask both of his key advisors on climate change issues, Ramesh and Saran, to put their heads together and prepare a joint statement on India’s approach to the Copenhagen climate summit scheduled for December 7 to 18. Such an authentic statement seems imperative for clearing the mist from several misapprehensions that have emerged over key aspects of India’s perception of how to go about for averting global warming. Among the issues that need to be clarified, the most significant one concerns concurrence accorded by Saran, as India’s lead negotiator on climate change, to a developed countries’ plea that the developing nations should accept an overall cap of 2º C in the rise in temperature. This is being viewed as succumbing to the developed countries’ pressure to undertake binding commitment to cap emissions, something that could hamper the country’s economic growth. The other equally significant recent development that needs to be put in clearer perspective through the mooted official statement concerns the suggestions reportedly made by Ramesh in a letter to the prime minister to the effect that India should jettison the Kyoto protocol and detach itself from the G-77 block of developing countries to be able to take on emission reduction targets. The letter, reported in a section of the media, was also purported to have stated that India should permit external scrutiny of measures that it takes at its own cost. Though Ramesh had issued a public rebuttal, maintaining that he was quoted out of context and that India’s stand on climate change remained unchanged since 2004, the seeds of suspicion about disharmony of views among top government functionaries had already been sown. Of course, as of today, there is little evidence to suggest that the Copenhagen meet would succeed in thrashing out a consensus-based successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change that expires in 2012, but the public surely has the right to know what India is willing, or unwilling, to contribute to the global combat against climate change.