India lambasts ‘pernicious’ US carbon tariffs

India’s newly-installed environment minister on Tuesday lambasted US climate-change legislation that would allow the imposition of import tariffs on goods from countries that do not take sufficient steps to control carbon emissions.

Jairam Ramesh, who took over the environment portfolio after recent elections, was adamant that New Delhi would not agree to binding emissions targets as part of global climate-change negotiations.
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“India will not accept any emissions targets – period. It is the bottom line; a non-negotiable stand,” he said on Tuesday. “This is not something that India is going to budge on, under any circumstances.”

Binding emissions targets for developing countries are not part of the United Nations negotiations, instead countries such as India are being asked to draw up “national action plans”. These set out how they will attempt to curb emissions and encourage clean energy.

The US House of Representatives on Friday backed a “border adjustment tax” to equalise carbon emissions charges between domestic production and imports from countries that do not cap emissions. The legislation has yet to be passed in the Senate, where it is expected to face tough opposition.

However, Mr Ramesh denounced as “pernicious” the US effort to impose “trade penalties” on countries that do not match its carbon reduction efforts.

“We reject the use of ­climate as a non-tariff barrier,” he said. “And we categorically reject any attempt to introduce climate change as an issue at the [World Trade Organisation].”

He warned that the intellectual property rights regime protecting green technologies woudl have to be addressed. Many are in the private domain – and thus expensive for developing countries.

With 1.1bn people – roughly a sixth of the world’s population – India has one of the lowest per capita emission levels, with 1.2 tonnes per head, about 4.6 per cent of total global emissions. “India has not polluted – we are bearing the brunt of global climate change caused by the developed countries and we are being asked to curb emissions,” he said. “I find this ­ludicrous.”

However, India’s carbon emissions are expected to rise sharply in the future, especially as the country tries to meet its power deficit through the rapid development of generating capacity. India uses about 450m tonnes of highly-polluting coal for power generation each year, a figure that Mr Ramesh said would rise to about 1bn tonnes in less than a decade.

“There is no running away from our karma – without coal, we have no economic future,” he said.

He said India needed access to new technologies – including clean coal – to help reduce the environmental impact of its dependence on coal and to deal with other climate change issues.