India
has faced considerable, and largely unfair, pressure from the
industrialised world to take action for a problem substantially created
by them. At the same time, India has much to lose from a changing
climate, and much to gain for climate and non-climate reasons from
enhancing the ecological sustainability of our development path.
The
NAPCC starts with an important commitment to re-direct growth
objectives toward ecological sustainability, but provides a mixed
bag of measures through which to do so. As a result, the NAPCC
document is neither fully vision nor plan. And it fails to grapple
squarely with the international deadlock in the climate arena.
Despite these drawbacks, simply having such a plan is significant for
climate related debates in India.
On the other, the G8 summit
in Japan was also expected to address the issue of climate change and
come up with a vision statement as how it is to be achieved.
But
what emerged from the summit leads to the conclusion that the rate of
progress on critical issues between successive summits is questionable.
The leadership of the richest countries in the world needs to reflect
on their responsibility to the global community at large and the
expectations which call for bolder measures and major changes in the
interests of protecting the planet and all species living on it.
If
the G8 countries, led by the United States, are indeed serious about
mitigating climate change, they must deliver on their promises between
now and 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol ends. They need to work with
utmost urgency to cut their own emissions from a meaningful baseline.
Critical Concerns
