India moots incentives for green growth activities at UN climate forum

Indian Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar has mooted a new idea of incentivising the green growth activities with 'green credit' instead of relying on carbon credit mechanism.

The carbon credit provides a "way out for emitter to get rid of the blame" of pollution by paying for the emissions, Javadekar said at the second meeting of the business dialogue for CoP-21 at UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in New York on Saturday.

"At present, CDM is facing one of the most severe crises since its inception. Therefore, the world must discuss the new ways to make it a success with newer concepts like green credit," he said.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the UN-run scheme, allows emission-reduction projects in developing countries to earn certified emission reduction (CER) credits.

These CERs can be traded and used by industrialised countries to a meet a part of their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto climate change protocol.

Javadekar said the CDM was a success for the first commitment period ending in 2012, but later it slowed down due to demand-supply mismatch and low ambition for emission reduction expressed by developed countries.

"In addition, the unilateral decision taken by some countries to restrict the benefits of CDM to least developed countries (LDCs) only, and not to other developing countries like India has further reduced the confidence in the market mechanism," he said.

The minister said the world was ready with respective Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) on reducing emissions to work in the direction of green growth.

"Thus the signal for the industry is positive and they should invest more and more for research and development," he said.

Javadekar said the real issue was how to make available the "critical technologies" for the developing world at an "affordable cost".

"To this end, India is proposing that part of the green climate fund should be used for this purpose which will be a win-win proposal for all the stakeholders," he said.

The 21st session of the conference of the parties (CoP-21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will be held in Paris from November 30 to December 11.

The conference needs to achieve a new international agreement on climate, applicable to all countries, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.