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‘India will not agree to targets for cutting carbon emissions’

SAPPORO (JAPAN): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said emphatically that India would not accept any targets that may be set by international bodies reducing its carbon emissions.

Speaking at a press conference onboard a special Air India aircraft flying him to Japan for meetings on the margins of the G-8 summit, where climate change and curbing of carbon emissions are expected to be hot issues of debate, Dr. Singh said, “Our position has been made very clear.”

“India cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be regarded as a major polluter of greenhouse gases,” he said. “Our contribution to global emissions is less than 4 per cent. On per capita basis it is among the lowest — an average of 1.2 tonnes.”

“For us the topmost priority is development,” he said, but added that India had brought out a national plan to deal with climate change.

“I had said (last year at the Heiligendamm G-8 summit) that India’s per capita emissions of greenhouse gases will never exceed the average of the developed countries, and therefore if the developed countries make deeper cuts, that will be an incentive for us to move at a faster pace,” he said.

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