Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met US President Barack Obama, as well as the leaders of France and Britain on Monday, and called for a climate change agenda from upcoming global talks in Paris that helps developing countries access finance and technology.
Modi said after meeting Obama that the two shared an “uncompromising” commitment to fighting climate change without hurting development.
He thanked Obama for responding positively to his call for a global public partnership to develop sources of “clean” energy.
Photo: AFP
“We look forward to [a] comprehensive and concrete outcome in Paris, with a positive agenda on combating climate change that also focuses on access to finance and technology for the developing world, especially the poor countries and small island states,” Modi said.
Nearly 200 nations are to meet in Paris in December to try to hammer out a deal to slow climate change by aiming to keep temperatures below a ceiling of 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
India is one of the few large economies of the world that has not yet submitted its strategy to the UN outlining how it plans to address climate change.
The deadline for these commitments, known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) is this week.
Last week, China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, renewed its commitment to bring its spiraling emissions to a peak by “around 2030.”
Indian Minister of the Environment Prakash Javadekar last week told reporters that India’s peak year would be a “distant” one because it needed to fight poverty and give the more than 300 million Indians still living without power access to energy.
Javadekar said India would commit to reducing emissions if the developed world could provide more technology and finance to combat global warming.
After their talks on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Obama said he was encouraged by Modi’s “aggressive” commitment to “clean” energy and stressed the importance of India taking “a leadership role” in Paris, saying this would “set the tone not just for today, but for decades to come.”
A concrete plan on how to raise US$100 billion per year to help developing nations cope with and combat climate change is to be a key factor determining the success of a Paris climate agreement.
World finance ministers are to meet on Wednesday and Thursday next week in Lima to try to agree on that framework.
Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Vikas Swarup said Modi made “very clear” to Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande “that the current climate of negativism was not a useful factor as we approach ... Paris.”
“Rather than just putting pressure ... he said it would have been far better if we had a positive agenda which enabled countries to go in for more sustainable parts of development by providing them with finance and the relevant technology,” Swarup said.
Swarup said Modi’s meeting with Hollande was joined by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, bringing the private sector into the debate.
“With people like [Gates] getting involved, there is a real possibility of there being private-sector partnerships on the technology side,” the spokesman said.
Swarup also said Modi told the leaders that India had sought UN permission to declare its carbon emission commitments a day late on Friday, because it was Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday.
“[Gandhi] was a person who was passionately committed to the cause of the environment, who was a champion of sustainable development,” Swarup said.
“If we declare our INDCs on Oct. 2, then it adds a very significant moral dimension as well to our commitment,” he added.
Swarup said that “there was a lot of appreciation for this point of view” from Obama and the other leaders.
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