The Hindu : Business : PM against use of trade curbs

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Friday, Nov 03, 2006
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PM against use of trade curbs

Special Correspondent

`India has fulfilled all its obligations under the Montreal Protocol'

PHOTO: R. V. MOORTHY

FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with S. Kakakhel, Deputy Executive Director of UNEP, at the Eighteenth Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi on Thursday.

NEW DELHI: Advising against the use of trade restrictions to ensure compliance with multilateral environmental agreements, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said such restrictions could adversely impact economic growth and poverty alleviation efforts. "This would nullify gains for developing countries accomplished after strenuous negotiations in the WTO regime,'' he said at the high level segment of the 18th Meeting of Parties to the Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer here on Thursday.

While fulfilment of commitments in multilateral environmental agreements by all parties must certainly be ensured, the country needs to be more creative and less adversarial in its approach to compliance,

Dr. Singh said. "Let us not seek trade advantages through the instrument of environmental treaties and not trim the flow of multilateral and bilateral resources for poverty alleviation to accomplish unrelated environmental objectives. Instead, let us ensure that the financial and technology resources needed to accomplish agreed environmental objectives, consistent with growth and poverty alleviation, are indeed additional. And, that these are administered efficiently through dedicated mechanisms,'' he said.

Pointing out that it was imperative to make the process of economic development, globalisation and societies more inclusive, the Prime Minister said that in doing so India would ensure that harmony between man and nature was sustained for all times.

"The success of our experiment in nation building within the framework of a democratic polity is vital to the future of mankind,'' Dr. Singh said.

Technology transfer

Suggesting that the Montreal Protocol could have done better in terms of the realisation of broader goals of sustainable development in the developing countries, which must be a principal objective of multilateral environmental agreements, Dr. Singh said technology transfer had not occurred to any significant extent.

Drawing attention towards the positive impact that the national regime for sustainable development has had on the development process, the Prime Minister said that while in the industrialised countries, key environmental parameters reversed their decline at per-capita incomes of $6,000-8,000 in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, in India this decline has been reversed at a per-capita income of $2,000 in PPP terms. "This is no mean achievement,'' he said.

Dr. Singh said depletion of the ozone layer had emerged as a significant global environmental concern in the past few decades and added that India had fulfilled all its obligations under the Montreal Protocol and this had been done within the timetable laid down and, in some aspects, before schedule.

The Union Environment and Forests Minister, A. Raja, spelt out the series of fiscal and regulatory measures India had taken to facilitate phase-out of ozone depleting substances (ODS).

All financial institutions and commercial banks had been directed not to finance new establishments with ODS technology and as per the control schedule of the Montreal Protocol, India had so far met the compliance dates of freeze of CFC production and consumption in July 1999, freeze of halon production and use in 2002 and total phase-out of halon production and use, he said.

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