Even as Europe and Japan mount pressure on India and China to commit themselves to mitigate climate change ahead of the upcoming G8 summit, New Delhi sticks to its earlier stand that the country is a victim of the problem created by industrialised countries.
At the power-packed roundtable of rich nations next month, India will also stress on its significant spending on adapting to climate changes.
For the first time, the Ministry of Environment and Forests has revealed that India spends as much as 2.17 per cent of the GDP to address the changes brought about by climate change. "We are the worst sufferers (due to changes brought about by global warming). We had repeatedly stated that climate change agenda must include how to adapt to these changes and make resources available for these. The country spends over two per cent of the GDP to address these issues," said environment secretary Pradipto Ghosh.
In its presentation to an international audience earlier this month, the Environment Ministry said, "Resources required globally for adaptation (to climate change) are of similar magnitude as greenhouse gas mitigation."
It felt that funds diverted from economic growth and poverty alleviation programme for adaptation to climate change is not the answer. The rich nations should set aside money for helping the poor overcome the adverse impact of climate change.
Global warming will affect those dependent on natural resources in a number of ways. Those near the coasts will have to shift homes as sea levels rise. Occurrence of disasters like cyclone, droughts and floods are expected to intensify. Water availability, irrigation and agriculture will affect food and nutritional security of the poor. Vector-borne diseases like malaria will reach newer areas, forcing people to spend more on treatment.
India has maintained that responsibility of cleaning the air rests with industrialised countries, whose rapid industrial growth in the earlier decades led to emission of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These gases trapped more heat in the atmosphere raising the global temperature and which changed the sea-land interface causing the climate pattern to go haywire.
"Developing countries like India are not historically responsible for creating the problem of global warming, nor will it be a significant contributor to carbon dioxide in the near future. Any legally-mandated measures for reducing greenhouse gases are likely to adversely impact India's growth, which has implications for poverty reduction," Ghosh said. By any standard, even the elite in India consumes far less than the middle-class of industrialised countries, he said.
"India has put measures to reduce India's carbon emission by 25 per cent in 2020," Ghosh said. India has cleared as many as 600 projects under the clean development mechanism under Kyoto Protocol, highest in any developing countries.
