India reaffirms opposition to binding carbon cuts

India reaffirmed to the United Nations that it would reject any attempt to impose legally binding climate change goals, but pledged to reduce emissions intensity. In an endorsement of December's much-criticised Copenhagen Accord, the environment ministry in New Delhi said it had submitted plans to reduce emissions intensity by 20 to 25 percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. India's proposal, first made in parliament in December ahead of the Copenhagen summit, came before a UN deadline on January 31 for nations to re-state their climate change policies. In a statement late Saturday, India said its UN submission "clarified that its domestic mitigation actions will be entirely voluntary in nature and will not have a legally binding character.

" The cut in emissions intensity means that each dollar of gross domestic product (GDP) in India -- a rapidly developing economy -- must generate 20 to 25 percent fewer emissions by 2020 compared to 2005. India is part of a coalition including Brazil, China and South Africa which lobbied successfully at the Copenhagen meeting against any binding emissions caps. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh hailed the accord and said the country had emerged from the negotiations a winner. But environmentalists condemned the failure to agree on any measures that would force countries to reduce emissions.

India -- one of the world's top-five carbon emitters in terms of volume -- has insisted that rich countries, which are responsible historically for global warming, should bear the burden of mitigating the future problem. Only a handful of nations, including the United States, have submitted their papers ahead of the deadline to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).