India Offers Equity Principle Meet In Run Up To Cancun

 

“India would be delighted to host a meeting before Cancun (in Mexico) to enable this discussion (to arrive at an operational set of formulae on equity based primarily on cumulative per capita emissions)," Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said at the recently concluded seventh meeting of Major Economic Forum in Rome.

 

“Hopefully we can make tangible progress on this by Cancun and in Cancun. Let us work together collectively to ensure that Cancun becomes an equity-based conference and not one that gives a burial to it," he said. To firm up their stand on the issue, the BASIC Group comprising of India, Africa, China and Brazil are meeting in Rio de Janeiro in late-July where they will attend a workshop to deliberate equity related matters.

“These are important discussions and we must now bring these concrete proposals from the margins into the core of our negotiations. If only lip service continues to get paid to equity, and if we pay obeisance to it only in words and think we have addressed the issue, I am afraid that no international agreement will be possible," Mr. Ramesh noted. His comments came in the backdrop of the developed nations attempt to move for a global cap on emission without spelling out how the burden to maintain a certain temperature level would be shared. Read the full report here.