NEW DELHI - Britain urged India on Friday to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change to prevent "devastating" effects on millions of poor living in the South Asian subcontinent.
British Foreign secretary Margaret Beckett said that while there was no doubt that developed nations had to bear a greater share of the responsibility, developing economies must also pitch in more because time was running out.
Beckett's comments came days after a report commissioned by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government said failure by governments to act on climate change could plunge the world into an economic crisis on par with the 1930s depression.
"How we respond to climate change will have a direct impact on everything that we as governments want to achieve," Beckett, who began a week-long visit to India on Thursday, told a business conference. "India, of course, will be no exception."
"Indeed, if we don't manage climate change right it will greatly add to the problems which you are already grappling with on resource management, access to fresh water, food supply, migration, poverty, energy security and regional security."
Beckett said Indian leaders had agreed on the importance of tackling climate change during talks with her.
London's efforts to push its environmental policy is a part of Blair's drive to persuade the United States, as well as fast-growing developing nations such as China and India, to sign up to a new global pact to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
While countries like China and India are not required under the Kyoto Protocol to cut emission levels at this stage, they are the world's second- and fourth-biggest polluters, respectively.
CLEAN COAL
India says it must use more energy to lift its population from poverty and that its per-capita emissions are a fraction of those in rich states which have burnt fossil fuels unhindered since the Industrial Revolution.
While New Delhi is taking steps towards more efficient usage of energy and is progressively curbing the use of pollutants which harm the atmosphere, it says it needs more financial resources and the transfer of new technologies to achieve this.
India is also a member of the Asia-Pacific Partnership, an alliance of six of the world's biggest polluters, which seeks to be an alternative to Kyoto by allowing countries to share clean energy technologies.
Beckett agreed that India was taking steps like investing in renewable energy sources, promoting biodiesel, wind energy and pursuing nuclear power.
But it needed to do more in areas such as clean coal technology which would increase energy efficiency and cut the cost of electricity.
Failure to step up efforts would be devastating and some signs of the impact were already visible she said -- frequent massive flooding in northern India and Nepal's driest winter in recorded history last year.
"It will not cost developed or developing countries the earth to tackle climate change," Beckett said. "But it will cost the earth -- quite literally as well as financially -- if we do not. (Additional reporting by Nita Bhalla)
Story by Y.P. Rajesh
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
