Climate change: Developed nations must fix pre-2020 targets, says Prakash Javadekar

Prakash Javadekar was speaking at the sixth Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin.

Urging developed countries to immediately present their emission cut targets for the next five years, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar on Monday said it would be ironical for the international community to try to finalise “post-2020” actions on climate change at the Paris conference this year-end without having agreed to “pre-2020” targets for developed countries.

He was speaking at the sixth Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin. Countries are scheduled to finalise a global agreement on climate change at a meeting in Paris at the end of 2015. The agreement, which will aim to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and take steps to deal with impacts of climate change, is slated to come into effect in 2020.

But developed countries are expected to undertake ambitious emission cuts in the meanwhile as well, in keeping with their obligations in the Kyoto Protocol that will run till 2020.

“India has emphasised that developed countries should present ambitious targets for pre-2020 action and roadmaps for the same, well before Paris (conference). We have suggested that negotiators at Bonn … session (in June) should be directed to come up with draft decision text on pre-2020 actions,” he said.

Javadekar said India had already taken decisions towards reducing its carbon emissions. “…these actions are from a country which is not mandated under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. And, therefore developed world must (also) take ambitious pre-2020 action,” he said.

Source:: Indian Express