Leading up to the United Nations-led climate change summit in Copenhagen next week, India pledged to reduce GHG emissions by up to 25 percent by 2020 but said it would not accept binding targets, the Wall Street Journal reported today.
Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told his Parliament: "India must show leadership to its own people. We must show action," the New York Times reported today. The Wall Street Journal quoted Ramesh as saying: "India, of all the 192 countries in the world, owes a responsibility not to the world but to itself to take climate change seriously."
Martin Kaiser, climate-policy director at Greenpeace International, told the Journal: "This target puts pressure squarely back on industrialized country leaders." Navroz K. Dubash, a climate change specialist in New Delhi at the Center for Policy Research, told the Times that India had become a more constructive participant in climate change negotiations, but that the flurry of pre-Copenhagen announcements did not represent a breakthrough response to the crisis: "The game seems to be that all countries pick a politically safe number. India is now joining that game. And the game started with the United States."