The Cabinet on Thursday is expected to discuss and approve the Indian negotiating position for the Warsaw meet. The negotiating position, crafted by the environment and external affairs ministries, puts primacy of public funds over private for helping developing countries tackle climate change. It puts the responsibility of bringing down emissions to acceptable levels on the industrialised countries, and opposes the plan to reduce emission in the period up to 2020 through international initiatives focused on black carbon, agricultural methane, energy efficiency, and refrigerants like hydroflurocarbons.

India is also silent on emission reduction efforts in the post-2020 period, though carbon emission reduction targets for all countries has been on informal agenda of the UN sponsored negotiations.

Finance is a key issue in the global climate change negotiations. India is insisting that public finance must take precedence in providing money for developing countries to deal with climate change, with private finance playing a supplementary role. India's insistence on public funding comes at a time when there is a growing realisation among countries for the need to access funding from sources beyond the national exchequer.

The International Energy Agency puts the total requirement of climate finance at $1 trillion per year. With scarcity of public funds in the aftermath of the economic downturn, and increased domestic pressures to invest in national priorities, there has been a push to rely on private funding while using public funding strategically.

New Delhi acknowledges the significant role of private investment in addressing climate change. While it agrees that an enabling environment needs to be created to promote investment, private funding can't substitute public finance as the main source.

India will support establishment of a separate window under Green Climate Fund for loss and damage, which is a key issue for vulnerable and least developed countries. Though it has suggested a vulnerability assessment to guide financial allocations.

India intends to have more clarity on the issue of HFCs, in terms of technologically viable and economically feasible alternatives before acting on the G-20 commitment to which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was party.

In a clear indication that India would mount a concerted effort to put industrialised countries on the mat over the issue of climate finance, New Delhi has expressed serious concern over the lack of money in the Green Climate Fund, as well as the absence of a roadmap for raising $100 billion every year for climate finance from 2020.

New Delhi will also stress that funding for climate change has to be over and above the official development assistance. Industrialised countries have been pushing the idea of "greening" development assistance, allowing for the inclusion of existing assistance in the overall climate funding. India and other developing countries have consistently maintained that funding for tackling climate change must be over and above any funding that is currently provided.