The government is likely to defer its plans to bring a climate legislation showing possible emission pathways for the country, after developed nations led by the United States insisted that any domestic targets for carbon emissions reduction specified in that legislation would be treated by the international community as legally binding commitments for India.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has been planning to introduce a Bill in the winter session of Parliament suggesting ‘broadly indicative’ pathways for India’s greenhouse gas emissions. The legislation is meant to define the broad objectives for every sector aimed at limiting the growth of India’s emissions. However, these objectives would only be domestic aspirational targets for the country and not put for any international scrutiny.

At the climate meeting in Bangkok earlier this month, the developed countries, however, expressed their widespread support for the so called Australian proposal, which suggests that each country decide its own course of action on reducing their carbon emissions and then be held accountable to it through a legally-binding international instrument. The developed countries said they would put India’s climate legislation as its international commitment under such an instrument.

In such a scenario, the government is learnt to have decided to hold back on the climate legislation for the time being, at least till the end of the Copenhagen meeting in December. Sources in the government said there had been no progress on the legislation in the past few weeks even though a tentative draft was almost ready.

“The draft Bill has to go through a number of inter-ministerial consultations and a lot of details need to be worked out. There is not much movement happening on it as of now,” a source said.

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