Developed countries need to walk the talk on climate change: India

Ahead of the crucial UN meet on climate change in Paris later this year, India’s Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar has said that the developed nations would have to “walk the talk” on climate change and provide a green climate fund to the growing countries.

“Developed world would now have to walk the talk and will have to provide green climate fund to the developing world,” said Mr Javadekar, who is leading an Indian delegation to the US for a two-day meeting of Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate being hosted in Washington on April 19-20.

He underlined India’s efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change and added that the country is pro-actively engaging with the world to arrive at a fair and equitable agreement on climate change at the upcoming meet in Paris.

Alluding to India’s multifarious contributions to curbing global warming, he underlined, “Prime Minster (Narendra Modi) has put up an ambitious target of generating 175,000 megawatts of renewable energy. That is a huge contribution of India, because it will save 350 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year and would require 150 billion of investment. This is a huge contribution of India, essentially pre-2020.” “So the developed world would also have to put their best foot forward. This pre-2020 actions would pave the way for more actions from 2020 onwards,” he added.

He referred to the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s first climate agreement adopted in 1997, and underlined that the basic mandate and the principles of UNFCCC continued to remain relevant. Under the Kyoto protocol, some countries were required to take actions and some weren’t. “But now every country is taking action and that is a great movement forward, Mr Javadekar said.

The minister said that now every country was taking initiatives to mitigate climate change, which would boost development of new technology and innovations. The developed counties should understand and respect that. India, on the other hand, believes in human intent and intellect. Therefore, we are engaging with all countries, he said. “India is networking with as many countries as possible on the climate issue. From here we are going to Moscow where BRICS would meet,” the minister said.

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