China rejects India's emission monitoring plan

Cancun: Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh's proposal for a new verification regime of emissions has been rejected by China and the other BASIC group (India, China, South Africa and Brazil) countries at Cancun Climate Change Summit 2010.

"The sticky issue here is not so much the Monitoring Reporting and Verification (MRV). I see issue here is the Kyoto protocol issue. So if there is no second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol, there is no consensus on anything else at Cancun," said Ramesh.

It effectively means that Jairam Ramesh's proposal of bringing the G-77 countries and the BASIC nations on board with the idea of having international scrutiny for countries with more than 1 per cent carbon emission has been rejected.

Many in Cancun are calling Jairam Ramesh's proposal for MRV a possible bridge between the US and China. Ramesh suggested that the solution is for countries emitting over 1 per cent of the global amount of greenhouse gas emissions to report emissions to the UN every two to three years.

The Centre for Science and Environment Director Chandra Bhushan, meanwhile, has slammed the Union Minister's proposal of international reporting and verification on domestic actions.

"I think the minister is going to far to please US," said Chandra Bhushan.