Reiterating India’s stance on climate change, that the country did not expect external financing or technology for its domestic actions, Shyam Saran, the prime minister’s special envoy on climate change, said it would be legitimate to ask for global support if we were doing something more.
“India wants to have a supportive climate change regime to help us do what we are already doing in our own interest, but we are a developing economy. We are not making our action on climate conditional to what anyone else is doing. If we have to do more, then we do need global support,” said Saran, while addressing an event at the India Economic Summit here today.
The debate is revolving around whether developed countries should maintain their standards of living or will developing countries’ growth process be impacted.
Saran pointed out that any global climate change agreement had to be fair and equitable but in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit, the debate has been intertwined with very real fears for the economic prospects of countries. So, India has a major stake in Copenhagen, “as we are the most vulnerable to climate change. There needs to be a global regime that does not make developing countries feel that they are being pushed unfairly”.
However, he noted there was a very deliberate attempt to downgrade international expectations and that was unfortunate.
