India told the United Nations that it would reject any further impositions by Western nations to bind nations to climate change goals such as carbon emissions. In their statement, they added that India would, however, work toward reducing its own emissions as best they could. Poorer nations have been frustrated by Western nations attempts to bind countries into cutting emissions to a certain level. They have repeatedly said that the West needs to take more responsibility over their actions that have led to climate change and worries of catastrophic disaster. Environment ministers from developing nations have repeated arguments since December's conference in Denmark that they will be unable to cut emissions to certain levels if they want to build up their infrastructure in the immediate future. In an endorsement of December's much-criticized Copenhagen Accord, the environment ministry in New Delhi said it submitted proposed plans to reduce emissions intensity by 20 to 25 percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. India's proposal, made to its Parliament in December ahead of the Denmark summit, came before a January 31 deadline for nations to re-state their climate change policies in line with summit requirements. In a statement late Saturday, India said its UN submission “clarified that its domestic mitigation actions will be entirely voluntary in nature and will not have a legally binding character.” The cut in emissions intensity means that each dollar of gross domestic product (GDP) in India — a rapidly developing economy — must generate 20 to 25 percent fewer emissions by 2020 compared to 2005. India is part of a coalition including Brazil, China and South Africa which lobbied successfully at the Copenhagen meeting against any binding emissions caps. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh hailed the accord and said the country had emerged from the negotiations a winner. But environmentalists condemned the failure to agree on any measures that would force countries to reduce emissions. India — one of the world's top-five carbon emitters in terms of volume — has insisted that rich countries, which are responsible historically for global warming, should bear the burden of mitigating the future problem. Only a handful of nations, including the United States, have submitted their papers ahead of the deadline to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). BM
