India to help climate but on its own terms: Govt

New Delhi: India is not going to accept any legally binding emission reduction agreement at the Copenhagen climate summit, Minister of State for Environment and Forest Jairam Ramesh told the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
Ramesh was replying to a lively four-hour debate on the climate change and the position India will take at the December 8- 18 international summit.
"India will never accept a legally binding emission reduction agreement," Ramesh said.
"There are some attempts by some countries that developing countries should announce when their emissions will peak. We will not sign a peaking year agreement. This is not acceptable. There is no question on compromising on these two non-negotiables but depends on the concessions we get from the international community."
Ramesh said India was most vulnerable to climate change due to four reasons.
First, two-thirds of India's population was still dependent on the monsoon, which was impacted by climate change.
Two, climate change impacted the Himalayan glaciers, which were receding, endangering the water flow in the rivers of northern India.
Third, ecologically sensitive areas such as the Western Ghats, the North East, Andamans, Lakshadweep were being impacted by climate change.
Fourth, climate change would exacerbate the effect of mining in forest areas of Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh.
Ramesh said the problem was that India had hardly any information of its own on climate change effects, which he called "a pathetic state of affairs". He said most of the information was derived from Western sources and talked of the urgent need to start research and have "our own scientific capacity" to study all aspects of climate change in India.