'India's commitments to combat climate change generous'

Says India's commitments are more ambitious than China's "highly publicised" ones

India has made "generous commitments" to combat climate change, even as developed nations have fallen short of their obligation to provide finance and technologies for mitigation, National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya said on Monday.

In a blogpost India's Generous INDCs on the NITI Aayog website, Panagariya said the developed countries have the principal responsibility to arrest the climate change phenomenon. According to him, India's commitments are more ambitious than China's "highly publicised" ones. Besides, India's emission intensity is half that of China. In spite of that, India has offered to slash its emissions per-unit of gross domestic product figures to 35 per cent by 2030.

This, he said, should be considered generous referring to the 'polluter pays' principle, according to which the costs for cleaning up pollution must be borne by those who cause it. "Today, this principle is accepted as a fundamental principle of environmental policy of both the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Community," he said.

Under the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) policy to combat climate change, India had recently said it would raise installed electricity generation capacity from non-fossil-fuel-based energy sources to 40 per cent of its total generation capacity by 2030. Panagariya said the US derives only 20 per cent of its energy from such sources.

The creation of additional carbon sink of 2.5-3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent through expansion of the forest cover is also on the cards.

Panagariya stressed that the principal responsibility for arresting climate change rests on developed countries. Such countries, he said, should at least provide financing through grants for the purchase of costly technologies for mitigation if they want developing countries such as India to aggressively join hands in the process. He added, "So far, they have fallen well short of their obligation in this dimension."

Panagariya also took on influential Harvard economist Richard Cooper, who rejects any liability of the rich countries for damage done by past emissions on the ground they did not know the harmful consequences of their actions at that time.

The NITI Ayog vice-chairman's criticism of developed countries come weeks ahead of the 21st Conference of Parties international conference seeking to find climate change solutions. It is to be held between November 30 and December 11 in Paris, France.

INDCs will form part of the discussions and negotiations there. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said earlier that although India did not create the climate change problem, it would not shy away from contributing to its solution.

Panagariya also trained his guns on China saying China contributed 25.1 per cent of global flow emissions in 2012. The contribution of India during that year was 5.7 per cent, he said.