India’s strategy at the Paris Climate Change summit will be to work with emerging economies and press the developed world to concede that responsibility for cutting carbon emissions after 2020 cannot be shared equally by rich and poor nations.
Two major issues that New Delhi will focus on at the Conference of the Parties (CoP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are failed ambitions on transferring low carbon technologies to the developing world, and the lack of support for a plan to fund mitigation and adaptation efforts.
The UN Convention on Climate Change has followed the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR), reflected in the Kyoto Protocol and reinforced last year at Lima. Under this, poor countries were not required to cut emissions. India is emphasising this again and demanding that developing nations be allowed greater room in cutting emissions beyond 2020, as they seek to eliminate poverty through fast-paced economic growth.