Culture club

The environment was just right to link global issues like climate change and sustainable development to domestic polices. But the year gone by saw India waste a good opportunity to draw the business circle into the green culture.
If the CII complained that it had been kept out of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, individual entrepreneurs with skeletal proposals for the much-hyped Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol went round in circles looking for guidance. All along, international business houses and multilateral agencies went to town with the message that green is also the colour of money!
To be fair, the minister for environment and forests, TR Baalu, made it clear that it would be unrealistic to expect carbon trading to take off immediately. There are a lot of issues to be ironed out and ’02 was devoted to this.
Notably, at COP 8, India valiantly led developing countries in resisting pressure from developed ones to take on commitments in reducing greenhouse emissions. When developed countries tried to initiate a dialogue on broader participation in greenhouse gases mitigation commitments for a period beyond ‘12, India argued that the per capital greenhouse gas emissions of developing countries was much lower. Also, that the overriding priority for developing countries was poverty eradication, for which economic growth is essential. Yet India was accused of soft-pedalling on contentious issues — taking refuge behind the “sustainable development� formula.
COP 8 did advance the operation of the Special Climate Change Fund and Least Developed Countries Fund to provide financial resources to developing countries. It also concluded three years of negotiations on reporting/review under the Kyoto Protocol. The Delhi Ministerial Declaration on Climate Change and Sustainable Development finally brought into focus the issue of adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change.