Developing countries must negotiate strongly in the environment summit in Paris for "fairness and equity" to enable them to meet their developmental needs, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) chief Sunita Narain said on Thursday.
"Fairness and equity are key for ensuring developing countries are able to meet their development needs while the world contains global warming. It is critical that countries from South Asia and Africa send their best people and negotiate hard on climate change," she said.
The climate negotiations were considered by governments to be a soft issue while trade negotiations were given priority, she added.
Narain was speaking to a group of journalists from India, South Asia and Africa who were attending the CSE's annual media briefing on climate change, ahead of the UN Conference of Parties (CoP) on climate change.
Emphasising the importance of viewing cumulative emissions by countries rather than the current annual emissions, Narain said: "It is due to the emission by developed countries such as the United States that the world has reached this state where it has to restrict emissions and global warming."
"They (US and EU) emitted in the past. We will emit in the present and future," she said, indicating the emission that India and Africa will make in order to meet the developed needs of their people.
The world leaders would gather in Paris for the 21st meeting of the CoP on climate change from November 30 to December 11 to negotiate an agreement, applicable to all countries, with an aim of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.
CSE deputy director general Chandra Bhushan, however, said the emissions plans of 119 countries, put out by the UN Framework for Climate Change (UNFCCC), would not be able to contain temperature rise below 2 degrees.
"This year, too, the climate change negotiations are very important. The world is already looking at the prospect of not containing climate change within 2 degrees Celsius," he said.
