Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on Friday emphasised that the world must agree on a legally binding deal at the next major U.N. climate talks in Mexico at the end of the year.
With the shift of economic power from the West towards emerging economies in the wake of the financial crisis, large developing nations had to take on larger responsibilities, he said addressing the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS) here.
Slovenian Prime Minister Danilo Turk said negotiations must be better organised in smaller groups, and non-governmental stakeholders actively mobilised to ensure more progress than was possible at Copenhagen.
Emphasising the importance of reliable, regular funding, Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg called for a price on carbon and the involvement of the private sector.
Anote Tong, President of Kiribati, a small Pacific island nation in danger of being swamped by rising seas, said a single global regulatory authority must be allowed to override the sovereign rights of individual nations with regard to emissions.
“I wish you could keep your greenhouse gases within your own country. But you can’t,” he said.
Manmohan, leaders stand by Pachauri
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, along with other world leaders, defended the embattled Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman R.K. Pachauri, in his inaugural speech at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit on Friday. “India has full confidence in the IPCC process and its leadership and will support it in every way it can,” Dr. Singh said, to the applause of delegates.
Both Dr. Pachauri and the IPCC have recently come under criticism from many quarters, including the Ministry of Environment and Forests, for an error in the timeline of the melting Himalayan glaciers. There were demands too seeking Dr. Pachauri’s resignation.
“Some aspects of the science that is reflected in the work of the IPCC had faced criticism. But this debate does not challenge the core projections of the IPCC of the impact of greenhouse gas accumulations on temperature, rainfall and sea level rise,” Dr. Singh said. Other world leaders also expressed their support to the IPCC.
