Need to focus on villages to achieve climate action goals:Dave

Climate action plans pledged by India can be achieved only if efforts related to it cover over six lakh villages in the country, Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave said today.
Ahead of the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP22) to the UNFCCC to be held in Marakech in Morocco next month, Dave said the issue of financing should be "clear, simple and straight" without manipulations by auditors.
He said that post-2020, India has to think whatever agreement was finalised in Paris and discussions that took place in Marakech, how it can be implemented on the ground in 6.5 lakh villages of the country.

"If INDC (Intended Nationally Determined Contribution) goals are to be achieved, we will have to connect this effort with 6.5 lakh villages of the country," he said.
"Two things are very important -- high-end technology that too without patent and minimum profit and second is finance. Finance means a transparent financial structure. Finance should be crystal clear.
"Finance should be simple and straight. But accountants and auditors, they keep on manipulating things. It should not be there. We will put that on the world platform properly," he said at an event here.

He said India had already started bringing up this issue at various bilateral and multilateral discussions.

"If not today, tomorrow there will be a clarity and modalities will be worked out so that in the future, we will be able to do it within a time-frame.
"At the same time, we will also generate accountability of audits of the finance. Proper modalities should be framed and all countries should agree to that. It will take a few more months," he said.
Addressing the gathering, the European Union's Ambassador to India Tomasz Kozlowski said that as far as EU is concerned, it has made certain commitments concerning finance and is delivering on that and will continue to do so.

"Concerning modalities, our objective is to make it as simple as possible. The system should be simple and result-oriented. All commitments that we have made, we are ready to deliver on them. We have so far delivered what we have committed," he said.
On the finance aspect, he said that in 2014, EU mobilised more than 14 billion euros for financing projects related to climate change. "It means that I disagree that EU and member states are not ready or not delivering," he said.