Barely a week ahead of the UN meet on climate change in Copenhagen, India on Monday made it clear that there will be no compromise on its position on carbon emission cuts and will preserve its economic interest at all cost.
New Delhi also sounded sceptical over substantive legally binding outcome from the Copenhagen summit starting from December 7 and expects only 'weak' commitments from the developed countries.
"At present what we are really negotiating is not how to deal with the climate change, but how we preserve our economic positions and how do we cap trade and promote some of our economic interest," Shyam Saran, the special envoy to prime minister on climate change, said at a CII function in New Delhi.
"And when you start mixing up dealing with what is an elemental global threat to humanity with profits and cost calculations or calculations about economic interest, then that leads to nowhere," the country's lead negotiator said.
Saran categorically stated that India is not expecting any fund or technology transfer for mitigation and adaptation for climate change from the developed nations at Copenhagen as what he could gather from the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Port of Spain.
"Hence, in this scenario we have to safeguard our country's interest," he said, adding that in no way India would take legally binding emission cuts.
Giving an overview perspectives of what could be the likely outcome at the Copenhagen, he said, "It is unlikely that we may have a legally binding outcome from these negotiations (from the developed nations), though that is our mandate."
"Also we are unlikely to get satisfactory response on strong actions for what developed nations who are most responsible for the climate change because of their contribution to the accumulation of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere," he added.
"And on that we are likely to have rather a weak outcome. Weak not only in the sense that we are not going to have weak legally binding commitments from them, but also we are likely to get weak commitments in numbers from them."
"If we take all the offers which are on the table at the moment, we will end up to the 20 per cent reduction in total emissions by developed countries by 2020 compared to 1990. This is far below measures if we really want to tackle the climate change as projected by the IPCC," Saran observed.
Saran also felt that major emerging economies like India will have to fend on their own despite the Rio summit (1992) declaration which stated that their sustainable development actions would be backed by the fund and technology from the developed nations.
"While smaller nations or island nations are likely to get fund, we major developing nations would have to fend on our own," Saran pointed out.
Image: Shyam Saran, the special envoy to prime minister on climate change.
