India says to tackle poverty before global warming
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-05-16 20:43
India said on Tuesday that rich nations must lead a fight against global
warming, telling a 189-nation U.N. conference that developing countries should
instead give priority to ending poverty.
India said that it could not be expected to limit use of fossil fuels, widely
blamed for stoking climate change, when 35 percent of its population lived on
less than a dollar a day and many lacked electricity, clean water and other
basics.
"Removal of poverty is the greater immediate imperative" than global warming,
Prodipto Ghosh, Secretary of India's Environment Ministry, told talks in Bonn
trying to work out new ways to fight climate change.
He said that India needed to use more energy to reach what he called
"minimalistic" development goals. Those included cutting poverty, raising
literacy rates to 75 percent by 2007 or increasing forest cover to 33 percent of
the nation by 2012.
"There will inevitably be greater greenhouse gas emissions," he said.
"Placing curbs on the growth of greenhouse gases will entail reduced economic
growth." India has about a billion people, almost a sixth of humanity.
He said that industrial states had to do most to reduce emissions from power
plants, factories and cars. He urged a "significant strengthening" of cuts in
emissions by almost 40 nations which support the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol.
The Bonn talks are discussing ways to widen U.N.-led action on global warming
beyond rich nations which support the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol to include
developing nations and outsiders led by the United States and Australia.
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