Dear Friend,
We seek your endorsement of the following Statement that is being sent out on behalf of the newly set up Campaign for Progressive Climate Policy in India. The Statement is also being widely disseminated to other networks, campaigns, activists and organizations. The list of signatories is being posted in a Weblog, and your Organizational/Individual name will be added once your endorsement is received. While the present Statement is the founding framework or “charter” of the Campaign, it is proposed as part of this Campaign to periodically issue statements or position papers on developments in India and abroad regarding the climate crisis. A list-serve is being set up for the Campaign signatories to facilitate mutual communication, and drafts of these statements will be circulated on the list-serve for comment. We look forward to your early endorsement and active participation in the Campaign. With warm regards, D.Raghunandan T.Jayaraman Delhi Science Forum & Centre for Science, Technology & Society All-India Peoples Science Network Tata Institute of Social Sciences New Delhi Mumbai Campaign for Progressive Climate Action & Policy The Campaign for Progressive Climate Action and Policy in India has been launched by a coalition of academics, non-profit professional organizations, NGOs, activists and informed individuals to advocate a progressive Indian climate policy, both internationally and domestically. The address of the weblog is http://progressiveclimatepolicycampaign-ind.blogspot.com (for brief history and other related documents and postings see http://progressiveclimatepolicycampaign-ind.blogspot.com We call upon all like-minded individuals to read and endorse the following statement. Please send your endorsements via email to: [email protected] (indicating whether endorsing in individual or organizational capacity) Statement October 2009 Climate Change is a major threat to humanity, especially to the lives of the poor in the developing countries. Urgent and concerted mitigation actions are required for preventing runaway climate change. The Indian Government has consistently championed the rights of developing countries by affirming the principle of “Common but Differentiated Responsibility” and the need for financial support for mitigation and adaptation. While the developed nations, particularly the United States, have repeatedly stalled any meaningful progress towards mitigating global warming, India’s approach historically treated climate change more as a foreign policy and diplomatic issue rather than a core developmental concern. Recently, however, the Indian government has shown a welcome shift towards a more pro-active perspective, recognising its responsibility in long-term climate change mitigation and leadership role among developing countries. This statement is a call for a progressive, consistent, integrated and long-term approach to climate policy and action by India. We seek to lay down broad principles for the long-term and implications for the ongoing international negotiations. and also towards the immediate international negotiations. The following broad principles must underpin an enhanced climate change policy: Substantial, targeted and binding commitments leading to meaningful reductions in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are vital for averting irreversible climate change. The failure to implement such reductions would have grave consequences for humanity in the long term apart from leading to serious negative impacts in the short to medium term. Since emissions stay in the atmosphere for decades, it is essential that these reductions begin immediately and are undertaken as fast as possible, making mid-term targets essential. The major burden of the impact of climate change will be borne by the poor and other vulnerable groups, especially in developing countries. Responsibility to climate-change vulnerable groups within India and outside is therefore a central concern. Equity both between nations and within nations lies at the heart of the climate debate. Climate change mitigation efforts must be directed towards actualizing equitable entitlements to the global atmospheric commons, overcoming the prior historical occupation of these commons by a few developed nations that has seriously restricted the “carbon space” for other developing nations. Developed nations of the global North bear the maximum responsibility for historical GHG emissions, amounting currently to over 77% of the GHG stock in the atmosphere. In most scenarios, emissions from developed nations will continue to constitute a majority of the atmospheric GHG stock even after desired mitigation actions are taken by all nations. Developed nations must therefore bear liability for both damage caused and for actions required for redress in terms of mitigation and adaptation. Even today, emissions from developed nations continue to be among the most significant sources of increasing GHG concentrations in the atmosphere. In per capita terms their emissions are five to ten times those of developing nations. Thus climate change action must begin with immediate and sharp emissions reductions by the developed nations. Developing countries have not contributed to the creation of the global warming problem. But they, particularly the larger ones including China, India, Brazil and South Africa, have to be part of the solution, keeping in mind maximum sustainable global emissions, even while respecting per capita emission equity. Calculations show that even if developed nations undertake the deep emissions cuts recommended by IPCC (reducing emissions to 95% of 1990 levels by 2050), the desired levels of global emissions and atmospheric GHG concentrations cannot be attained without large developing countries in contributing to mitigation actions in the medium and long term. The low-carbon pathways of development that developing countries need to evolve and pursue will need considerable effort that requires the participation of both the State and society as a whole. Environmentally sustainable and socially just development under these conditions would call for transformative societal goals, new scientific and technological inputs and new strategies for their deployment that emerge from a broad societal consensus. Both at the global and national levels, the requisite goals of mitigation and adaptation cannot be achieved through market mechanisms alone. In particular, carbon offsets especially between the North and the South not only effectively reduce actual emission reduction; they also shift the burden of emission reductions to lower-emission regions and dampen technological innovation necessary for mitigation. It is essential that developing countries, including India, integrate climate mitigation and adaptation into broader sustainable and just developmental goals. But such integration cannot be imposed by the North through conditionality on adaptation funding, or other strong conditions on international aid. Developing countries need to ensure that climate adaptation funding is an additional investment in meeting national goals and priorities. Specifically with regard to the international negotiations towards post-2012 arrangements, we urge the following as the starting point for discussion: · Greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere need to be contained at most at 450 ppmv, requiring global GHG emissions to stabilize and start declining by 2015 and halve by 2050, so that rise in global average temperatures could be contained to about 2 degrees Celsius by 2050. These global goals are based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and represent a lower bound to the required emission reductions in order to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the earth’s climate · The long-term goal of global emissions reduction and control agreements, and the thrust of actions taken in the interim towards it, should be to bring about convergence to a sustainable range of emissions per capita for all nations and within nations and to reduce inequality of energy consumption and therefore of emissions. · Annex-1 countries must undertake deep cuts in GHG emissions with binding reduction targets not only for 2050 (95% less than 1990 levels) but also for intermediate signpost years such as 2020 (40% less than 1990 levels) and 2030. Without such intermediate targets the longer-term goals either cannot be achieved or will come with huge cost burdens and/or short to medium term impacts · Abiding by the principle of common but differentiated responsibility, major developing countries with large growing economies and relatively high emissions such as China, India, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa and others, need to reduce emissions growth rates so as to achieve significant reductions (of the order of 25% at least) in the projected emissions by 2030 conditional upon the Annex-1 countries agreeing to deep binding cuts as above and compensatory funding and technological assistance as outlined further below. After 2030, the developing countries need to adhere to a trajectory of convergence towards globally sustainable per capita emissions goals. · National emissions reduction targets should not be permitted to be offset against any other kind of compensatory action elsewhere, especially in developing nations. · Developing countries must be assisted towards adaptation and mitigation measures through substantive transfers of funds and technologies by Annex-1 countries, understood not as aid but as defraying of liability and utilizing resources acquired through historical occupation and exploitation of the global atmospheric commons. More specifically: ¨ management and transfers of funds should be through transparent mechanisms under the direction of the COP; ¨ technology transfers should be free of IPR restrictions; ¨ development of new low-carbon technologies should be maximally through public funding, both within and between nations, so that such technologies are further guaranteed to be widely accessible or are in the public domain. LIST OF ORIGINAL SIGNATORIES Individuals (Institutional affiliation shown for information only) Sharachchandra Lele (ATREE, Bangalore) Navroz Dubash (Centre for Policy Research ) T. Jayaraman (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai) Suman Sahai (Gene Campaign) Anand B. Rao (CTARA, IIT-Bombay) Snigdha Kar (Indian Youth Climate Network) C.E.Karunakaran, Chennai Parthib Basu (Dept of Zoology, Univ. of Kolkata) Benny Kuruvilla (FOCUS on the Global South) Organizations All India Peoples Science Network Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti, New Delhi Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti (Karnataka) Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti (Punjab & Chandigarh) Centre for Ecology & Rural Development, Puducherry Delhi Science Forum Development Research Communication & Services Centre, Kolkata Federation of Medical & Sales Representatives Associations of India (FMSRAI) Gyan Vigyan Samiti, Uttar Pradesh Himachal Gyan Vigyan Samiti, Shimla, HP Madhya Pradesh Vigyan Sabha Prayas Energy Group, Pune Pondicherry Science Forum Society for Technology & Development, Mandi, HP Tamil Nadu Science Forum -- "[It is not] possible to distinguish between 'numerical' and 'nonnumerical' algorithms, as if numbers were somehow different from other kinds of precise information." - Donald Knuth --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. 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