India’s Position on United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Drafted by HKU/Poly U Copenhagen 2009 Simulation Project Team
Calvin Cheung, Serena Gao Jim, Lenzer, Ray, Winnie Ko, Cherry, Winnie Kwong, Richard Wong, Peko Fong, Jessica Yuan, Xilin Chen, Sebastian Lindstrom, Ryan Kilpatrick
1. National Obligations to Reduce Carbon and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
India realises that we would be one of the countries most affected by global climate change and is already starting to see the results in the form of severe draught and a reduction in agricultural yields. Because we are located in the global south and temperatures will continue to rise, it will add pressure to our already tenuous land and water resources, have an adverse impact on our agriculture, jeopardise our food security.
In addition, we have one the longest coast lines in the tropics, which would be affected by rising sea levels and the redistribution or displacement of people living in coastal areas, as well the ice melting from the Himalayas.
Although we are still enjoying moderate economic growth from the past decade, our efforts to develop are worthless if we let climate change take it away from us.
India is not going to follow the in the foot-steps of the developed countries, towards an economic model that fosters an unsustainable life style. We are willing to take up binding targets in order to inspire the world—and to for encourage the US and China to take the lead—even though we still need to lift the majority of our people out of poverty.
2. Carbon Trading Regime
We support the CDM initiative; however, we see the current system as a rational failure because it is constructed upon the same model as our economic structure (which necessitates ‘unlimited growth’). We, India, place equal value on promoting social good, protecting the environment and maintaining basic economic standards for people. This means that we will not compromise the production capacity of the people, taking on responsibilities at the cost of adding further burden to people; secondly, we seek to address the fact that the majority of emissions that we are talking about in India come from foreign-owned industries and factories which produces goods for consumption abroad. We call for radical reform which takes into account our values and these socio-economic realities.
3. Adaptation and Technology Transfer Fund
Whilst we recognise the need to address historical contribution as well as our shared responsibility in dealing with climate change, we do not to follow the psychology of blame. Climate change is a symptom of a particular development model which, as we have seen, has failed to provide a safe environment – and so our government cannot afford repeating the same path. The developmental model of the Industrial Age, which prides on the greater ability of human beings to manipulate and centralise natural resources for the purpose of temporary monetary and material benefits, reduces nature and humans to objects. Here, we would like to take the opportunity to call for a new and different development model.
India thinks that it can play a positive leadership role in initiating the development of this new model. At the same time, without compromising the need to reduce our CO2 emissions, our ability to reduce emissions will very much depend on technology transfer from developed countries like the US, Europe and Japan.
4. Monitoring and Enforcement
We are prepared to create a domestic environmental agency to enforce and monitor any promises made here to show the world that we are sincere in realising any commitment we make at the international level. This confidence is based on the view that we do not see climate change as just a separate environmental issue: it is intimately linked to developmental issues like poverty, environmental and social degradation, and the people’s lack of faith in their leaders. We call upon the international community to take a more a holistic approach—to see the underlying structural causes behind all these issues.
As the old Indian saying goes, ‘we borrow the earth from our children’. Now is the time for us all, as part of the planetary community, to question some of the more fundamental assumptions our economic and political structures are based upon. It is a different way of thinking which will lead us to create new possibilities.
Opening Speech
By Calvin
India has a moderate economic growth from the past decade, many of our cities has been modernise and full of sky scrapper. Industrialisations have become top priority in the last decade.
The other day I went to a site visit in one of the major development zone. I saw shoes manufacturing plant operate at its full capacity. I hear the noise of trucks transporting goods to the customers. I saw the chimney of the power plant is smoking, that’s great, DEVELOPMENT has arrived to India!
I asked my assistant what are they burning to generate power, he said it is coal power station, I thought it was great! We can reduce the cost of electricity as much as possible to attract more manufacturing plants to build in our land. So we then go to check out the potential development area.
Across the river, I saw the slum area. I told my assistant to find a way to get rid of them. Suddenly a boy run toward me, he was wearing something with a Nike sign on it, they look a bit funny, not really a pair of trainers. I asked my assistant if he knew what model is that, I may want to get one for my boy. He told me that they are not trainer, that slum boy pick it up from the dump because those shoes factor has been dumping defect material in the slum area.
Sometimes, I found difficult to justify the progress of development in our nation, although we attracted many foreign investor into our nation, but to look at the quality of life of many of our people, there isn’t much improvement for the poor people.
Do we want these developments? While we are facilitating the westerner (replace with “investors, consumers of these products we produced”) to keep their unsustainable living style, at the same time we became one of the biggest CO2 emission contributors. We try to develop our country but the majority of our people are still very poor. Our society does not provide them opportunity to improve; we are just letting a small percentage of people take advantage from the other. Our development is accelerating the climate change, attracting some serious impacts into out own land; by taking away the capacity of some of our poorest people, we expose them to the impact that they will never able to deal with.
We are talking about climate change all the time. What would climate change bring to us? Here, now, I wish to say. Unlike other issues, CO2 does not recognise any kind of boundaries of human construct - nations or classes. The image in my head is not only drought, flood or extreme weather, but also an opportunity to change the way we develop economy – the way we treat our people, our country, our planet,our selves. Here, now, I would like to ask you, what is most important to you, as a human being? What do you have to give to this world? To me, climate change is a chance, to restore the true value of being human in this planet, to adjust our way of living, to live in a more conscious relationship to ourselves. It is not how much material we own for our short life time, it is how much we can share with other people. I have a strong believe that the treaty meeting has put us together, not just about sharing the responsibility to reduce CO2 level, but also to build acommunity where our unity and common goal is a working assumption.
