Environment, Forest and Climate Change,

Text of the Speech given by Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Shri Prakash Javadekar at the Major Economies Forum in Paris today.

Excellencies,   The meeting of the MEF in Paris is going to be very crucial as all eyes are set on Paris as this city is going to be the birth place of a new climate change agreement in 2015. Let me first thank the Governments of France for hosting this important meeting before I begin with my interventions.  Our Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, who was elected with a substantial majority in the largest democratic elections in the world where 550 million people voted, sends his warm wishes to all of you. Our budget for 2014-15 was presented yesterday and we have taken a number of steps to combat climate change- (i)                 Rs 100 crores (US$ 20 million approx..) has been earmarked for National Adaptation Fund (ii)               Mission for Himalayan region has been set up (iii)             Clean Ganga River Mission has been set up (iv)             Cess on Coal has been enhanced from Rs 50 per ton to Rs 100 per ton, which would be used for cross subsidization, for clean energy and renewable energy. The Minister emphasised that we are concerned that despite being launched in 2009-10, the Green Climate Fund still has empty coffers. The need of the hour is the quick capitalisation as climate actions cannot wait. The Initial Resource Mobilisation (IRM) meeting in Oslo has hardly produced any result. The capitalization of the Green Climate Fund should be facilitated majorly by public financing in grant terms. Many countries are emphasizing on private sector investment & climate investment as panacea for all ills. However in our view the private sector can complement but not supplant public finance needed to address climate change and its impacts. According to the Minister the Green Climate Fund should be capitalised by 2015. This requires countries to agree to a road map for achieving this.  We cannot reclassify Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) as climate finance. This would have critical bearing on the pre-2020 and the post 2020 climate agenda. On the Role of finance post-2020, the Minister indicated that the probability of many developing countries submitting their INDCs will be very low if the developed countries do not commit substantial amount of climate finance upfront before September 2014 to fund the requirements likely to be depicted in the INDCs and bring it to the notice of the Heads of State of the developing countries.  Let me reiterate here that the issue of   climate finance and commitment thereof in substantial amount by the developed countries is an essential prerequisite for eliciting carefully prepared information on INDCs from the developing countries. He made the concrete suggestion that part of GCF should be used for financing critical technologies and purchase of IPRs and making them available to developing countries free of cost. Many Countries like UK, US, Australia, Canada, France, Russia, Germany, S.Africa, Brazil, Peru, Italy, Mexico, Indonesia, China, Singapore, Korea, Tanzania, Turkey, Poland and S. Arabia congratulated and appreciated the new Indian Government and expressed interest in working with it.