In the hours after the treaty was finalized in Paris, India's
"While give-and-take is normal in negotiations, we are of the opinion that the agreement could have been more ambitious," Prakash Javadekar said.
India's goals going into the talks were high. It wanted long-polluting rich nations to make the steepest cuts in climate-warming greenhouse gases, so others like India could continue to expand their economies on fossil fuels. It wanted considerable finance and free access to new technologies to expand its renewable energy capacity and cope with the effects of climate change.
And it wanted the final Paris climate treaty to enshrine the idea that industrialized nations, which have been emitting greenhouse gases for decades, are historically responsible for the climate crisis.
It was disappointed to some degree on all fronts. While the treaty does make distinctions between rich and poor nations in terms of various actions they should take, it ignores the concept of "historical responsibility" for climate change; it denies free access to new energy technologies; and it leaves open the possibility of developing countries still having to make emissions cuts of their own.
"The draft agreement further weakens differentiation between developed and developing countries like India," said Prodipto Ghosh, a former climate negotiator with a Delhi-based research group, The Energy and Resources Institute. "The absence of any target for financial resources to developing countries is disappointing."
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2015-12-india-compromised-climate-treaty.html#jCp
