New Delhi, Dec 13 (IANS) Rich countries must agree to greater emission cuts while helping developing nations cope financially in their efforts to transform into a low carbon economy, a leading industry body has said.
“Developed countries must take deeper reduction commitments, both in medium and long term, such as 25 percent reduction by 2020 and 80 percent reduction by 2050 from 1990 level,” the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) said in a statement Sunday.

“Developing countries such as India have a responsibility to their citizens to grow rapidly to meet and exceed the UN Millennium development goals,” it added.

The much-awaited Dec 7-18 climate summit in Copenhagen Friday prepared two sets of draft agreements on how to save the world from global warming, but they were no more than bare-bone frameworks, and the devil may lie in the details.

“The outcome of the summit should be equitable and should reflect the needs of developing countries such as India where significant portion of our population do not have access to energy,” CII Climate Change Council Chairman Jamshyd N. Godrej said.

“India will take Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMA). However, any limits that can affect our development will not be appropriate or acceptable,” he added.

CII said the present climate change negotiations must work-out a mechanism to enable transfer of high-impact climate-friendly technologies to developing countries.

For technologies not commercially viable in developing countries, a global fund should be created to buy intellectual property rights from original innovators and facilitate easier transfer to developing countries.

“This should be accompanied by a funding support mechanism to support global research and development to develop future high-impact clean technologies,” said the statement.

Among some of its other recommendations is the scaling up of the carbon market, simplifying procedures and reducing transaction costs to effectively use carbon instruments in assisting developing countries to mitigate climate change.

A portion of proceeds of carbon trading could be used to finance adaptation efforts in developing countries, said the CII statement.

“For developing countries, additional financing to support mitigation is quite critical. Developed countries must commit to necessary financial resources to be transferred to developing countries. This must be additional to the existing overseas developmental aid,” CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said.