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Pranab for collaboration in tackling climate change

— Photo: PTI

FOR JOINT INITIATIVE: External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee with Chairman, President’s Council on Environmental Quality, U.S., James Connaughton at the second Ministerial Meeting of Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate in New Delhi on Monday.

NEW DELHI: India has called for collaboration between the developing and developed countries in creating technologies to deal with climate change while ensuring energy security and economic growth. At the same time, it has stressed on striking a fairer balance between rewards for the innovators and the need to ensure the common good of humankind as far as the Intellectual Property Rights regime was concerned.

Inaugurating the Second Ministerial Meeting of the Asia Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate — a voluntary initiative set up in 2005 — External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said technology was recognised as a fundamental transformation agent in ensuring clean development and in tackling climate change. “This is all the more so for developing countries, where there is a large reliance on fossil fuel. It is our hope that this partnership will ensure that we collaborate to develop, deploy and disseminate appropriate and advanced clean technologies.”

Observing that there was very little research and development effort on technologies that respond to the requirements and resource endowments of developing countries, he said, this could be remedied by collaborative research and development between the developing and developed countries.

Canada joined as the seventh nation to join the Asia Pacific Partnership. The others are USA, Australia, China, India, Japan and Korea. All these countries seek enhancement of clean development.

Pointing out that the world was seized of the issue of climate change, Mr. Mukherjee said many initiatives were being taken to look at different and innovative ways to address this challenge. ``While all these efforts are laudable, there is near unanimity that the United nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the only framework for negotiations,” he said while adding that efforts in the partnership were consistent with the principles of the UNFCCC and complemented the Kyoto Protocol.

While spelling out the steps taken by India in clean development efforts including introduction of CNG for public and private transport in metros and raising energy efficiency in all the major energy intensive sectors such as steel, aluminium, fertilizer, paper and cement, the Minister said the government proposed to make available Compact fluorescent lamps at the price of normal incandescent bulbs.

The meeting also adopted 18 flagship projects for greener technology use as identified by the eight task forces set up by the partnership in sectors like cleaner fossil energy, renewable energy and distribution generation, power generation and transmission, steel, aluminium, cement, coal mining and buildings and appliances.

The partnership members appreciated the cooperation among different ministries within their governments and the nature and degree of public-private sector collaboration to take the agenda forward.

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