India to Commission Studies as Prelude to Carbon Emission Reduction Cuts – Report
India's federal government is planning to commission at least four studies to aid the country achieve its carbon emission reduction cuts as a prelude to the new global climate agreement expected to be signed in 2015.
According to a report by the Times of India on Wednesday, the four studies will focus on when the country's emissions are likely to peak and how best it can cut emissions. It will likewise tackle on the elements needed to create a new global climate deal that will force all countries to cut heat-trapping gases, one that will replace the Kyoto Protocol.
By 2015, the new global climate agreement is expected to redistribute the burden of emission reduction across more than 190 countries. The Kyoto Protocol focused on controlling only the fuel emissions of already industrialised nations. Developing nations such as China and India, the world's second and third-largest emitters of planet-warming carbon dioxide, respectively, had no commitments under Kyoto. The earlier version thus effectively allowed the poorest nations to evade commitments and regulations on coal burning emissions while the industrialised nations take up most of the burden to clean up the atmosphere.
"The year when India's emissions trajectory peaks before it starts to dip is expected to influence the date from when the government will be ready to take on a cap in absolute terms on greenhouse gases under a 2015 agreement," the report said.
The 2015 new global climate agreement is expected to take effect from 2020.
It was in December 2011 at the UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa, that China and India eventually conceded to work with the world in creating an international treaty that would include limiting the fossil fuel emissions of both industrialised nations as well as emerging economies like theirs.