Prime Minister’s special envoy on climate change Shyam Saran told The Indian Express that by insisting on emission-cut targets for countries like India, developed nations were showing complete disregard for the developmental concerns of these countries. This, he said, had dangerous implications and was aimed at permanently perpetuating the disparity in the living standards of people in the rich and poor countries.

“What they (the developed nations) are effectively saying is that they should get to keep what they have — their standard of living — because they attained it first, while at the same time trying to block the efforts of other countries to attain a similar lifestyle. Such NPT-kind of approach is not acceptable. It is definitely not going to work,” Saran said.

The NPT, or the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, bestows nuclear status on five countries, who also happen to be permanent members of the UN Security Council, while denying the option of developing nuclear weapons to the rest of the world.

Saran said the developed countries were also extremely reluctant to transfer technology or funds to the developing world to fight the adverse effects of climate change. This was giving rise to another technology denial regime, much like the nuclear apartheid which the NPT had created.

Saran’s comments come days after US President George Bush made a fresh statement saying a climate change framework which did not impose emission-cut targets on India and China, alongside other developed nations, would not be meaningful. He said he would raise this issue at the G-8 summit in Japan.

Saran, on the other hand, reiterated India’s long-held stand that only per capita emissions should form the basis for deciding a country’s burden in reducing greenhouse gases. He said any future global regime on climate change must be based on equity and recalled Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement at the launch of India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change last week in which he had emphasised that every citizen of this earth must have an equal share of the planetary atmospheric space.

“This is the most eloquent enunciation of India’s stand. No country in the world can find fault with this,” he said.

Saran, a former foreign secretary, said for countries like India, alleviating poverty and raising the living standards of poor was the most effective way of helping people in adapting to adverse climatic conditions.

“We must ensure climate resilience in our people through development,” he said.

Saran emphasised that refusing to undertake emission-cut targets did not mean that India was shirking its responsibility towards ensuring a cleaner environment. He said the National Action Plan, which had drawn a roadmap towards making India a low-carbon economy, provided a good answer to critics who questioned India’s commitment towards reducing the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere.

He said, on the contrary, it was the developed countries that were guilty of not honouring their legal commitments of bringing down their emissions to levels prescribed under the Kyoto Protocol.

“The developed countries are under pressure, because they have not fulfilled their commitments. And in an attempt to deflect that pressure, they are demanding that countries like India and China must also undertake emission-cut targets,” he said, pointing out that there was an attempt by some of the developed countries to start afresh in the endeavour to reduce greenhouse gases.

“But what happens to their unfulfilled commitments? The amounts that they were legally committed to reduce but haven’t reduced must be added on to their fresh commitments,” Saran said.