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India must also cut emissions: Blair
The Indian Express; March 21, 2008
Express News Service
Summary/Excerpts
“India must join industrialised countries in reducing greenhouse gas emissions if the world is to avert a global-warming disaster,” former British prime minister Tony Blair said here on Thursday. Blair’s comments are in complete contrast to India’s official position that rich countries have the primary responsibility to reduce emissions, while India need to grow its economy.
Blair is in India on a mission called ‘Breaking the climate deadlock’ that seeks to garner political support for the successor of the Kyoto pact, which expires at the end of 2012. In a range of meetings organised with businessmen, politicians and policy-makers over the next two days in India, he will try to find a way out for the stuck “new global deal.”
“The dilemma is this: how to cut a deal that has both the developed and developing in it, recognising that the obligations on the one can’t be the same as the obligations of the other... A deal that recognises the need to grow as well as the fact that the climate needs to be rescued,” he said at an event hosted by Nand and Jeet Khemka Foundation, a UK-based philanthropic group.
He said that unilateral deals and actions in individual countries have not helped as the emissions were still rising. The US and other developed countries have promised deeper cuts if the new global pact includes growing economies such as China and India on the next global warming pact. He clarified that it would be unfair to deny developing nations like India the chance to expand.
“The countries where per capita emissions are far higher—should bear the largest burden, but all nations should share in the solution,” he said. “It is fair to ask India to play the part if we help with transfer of technology necessary to cut greenhouse gas emissions and help finance this in order to make this work.” He said the challenge was to find the funding mechanism that would enable this transfer of technology.
© 2008: Indian Express Newspapers (Mumbai) Ltd.
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