BEIJING: India on Saturday appealed to its European partners to "do more" to combat climate change as it suggested adoption of a "holistic approach" to tackle the problem which threatened the global environment and development.
Noting that the progress on the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol has been slow, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that emissions of developed countries have actually increased by 2.6% from 2000 to 2005.
"We should call upon our European partners to do more in this regard. The developing world is committed to doing its share," Singh told the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit here.
"A holistic approach is needed to tackle this problem. We cannot do so by perpetuating the poverty of the developing countries, or by preventing their industrialisation," he said.
The challenge ahead is to put in place development strategies which improve living standards, create job opportunities and are also environment friendly, Singh said.
"Thus, common but differentiated responsibility should be the cardinal principle of negotiations to find practical and pragmatic solutions within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change," Singh said, advocating India's stance.
He also said the principle of convergence of per-capita emissions of developing countries with advanced developed countries is catching imagination of international community.
"We should recognise that each citizen of the world has equal entitlement to the global atmospheric space," he said.
Asserting that the dependence on fossil fuels was a "cause of many problems," Singh said "greater effort is needed to promote clean and renewable sources of energy, including nuclear energy" as he highlighted India's quest for enhancing its share of atomic power.
The world, therefore, needs a new compact plan to increase efficiency in the use of available energy resources, he said.
