Centre develops cold feet on climate legislation

At the climate meeting in Bangkok earlier this month,the developed countries,however,expressed their widespread support for the so called Australian proposal,which suggests that each country decide its own course of action on reducing their carbon emissions and then be held accountable to it through a legally-binding international instrument. The developed countries said they would put India’s climate legislation as its international commitment under such an instrument.

In such a scenario,the government is learnt to have decided to hold back on the climate legislation for the time being,at least till the end of the Copenhagen meeting in December. Sources in the government said there had been no progress on the legislation in the past few weeks even though a tentative draft was almost ready.

“The draft Bill has to go through a number of inter-ministerial consultations and a lot of details need to be worked out. There is not much movement happening on it as of now,” a source said.

A government official said the climate legislation was an important step towards ensuring a sustainable and low-carbon economy for India but it was also essential that it did not become a tool in the hands of the developed nations to bind India with. He said the legislation would be enacted at an appropriate time,probably after an international climate framework to succeed the Kyoto Protocol had been put in place.

Hectic parleys were continuing at the climate meeting in Barcelona to stitch together what was being described as a ‘shared vision’ that could be approved in Copenhagen. The results from the technology summit held in New Delhi last month were on Tuesday included in the technology track of the negotiations.