Pachauri says India cannot be pressurised on climate change

I / Washington July 22, 2009, 12:37 IST

Supporting India's stand that it would not budge under pressure from the western world to accept emission reduction standards, noted environmentalist R K Pachauri today said New Delhi cannot be "pressurised" on the issue and asked the developed world to act first.

Pachauri said the statement made by Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh during a joint interaction with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that India would not budge under pressure from the western world to accept emission reduction standards was the country's principled stand.

"I think it is a principled stand. What he (Ramesh) said is absolutely right. India cannot be pressured into taking commitments. There is no rational basis for asking India to do that," Pachauri, also the Chairman of the Noble prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told PTI in an interview.

"India has to keep enunciating and repeating the principles of common but differentiated responsibility," Pachauri said.

Arguing that the developed world has to move forward first, Pachauri said "unless they show their commitment to solving the problem, clearly we can't be pushed into accepting any commitment at this point of time."Pachauri felt that countries like India should not repeat the mistakes of the developed world.

"That would be a terrible mistake, not for global reasons but for our own local reasons, for national reasons," he said.

Advocating the path of sustainable development, he said India should not blindly follow the western model of development.

"Several things we are doing, I believe are wrong. We are not investing in public transport; we do not have regulations on our buildings. We are constructing the same shopping malls that you have in North America. Those are mistakes, we should not do. If we do, we are depriving our own people of the fruits of development," Pachauri said.

"If you have one shopping mall that uses 20 mw of power, you are depriving hundreds and thousands of people of getting basic electricity. We have to realize that.

"We must accept the fact that we can't afford, we should not even look for the lifestyles that we have in the developed world, because the developed world would also have to change. They can't continue on this path of exorbitant and excessive consumption of goods and services," he said.

It is good for us that India moves in the direction if sustainable development, Pachauri said.Noting that India cannot be seen in the same category as the developed countries, Pachauri said: "We now have a National Action Plan on Climate Change and I think, we should make sure that gets implemented  as effectively as possible because after all we are global citizens. We would be affected by climate change and we have to be part of the solution."

Calling for the implementation of the National Action Plan on Climate Change, Pachauri said then we can tell the whole world what we are doing.

"There is some delay in the implementation of that National Action Plan," he said.