Hydroflurocarbon phase-down: India asks developed world to take concrete decision on distributing financial incentives

Kigali: Asserting its position on Hydroflurocarbons (HFCs) phase-down issue at the conference on Montreal Protocol here, India today asked the developed world to take a concrete decision on distributing financial incentives for developing nations at this conference itself.

"If financial mechanism or incentive is there...It should be taken at the point of negotiation what we are having right now," India's lead negotiator Manoj Kumar Singh said at the conference here, while calling for transparency in allocating incentives for developing countries.

Incentives are offered by certain developed countries to the developing nations for helping them in carrying out research on technologies in wake of early phase-down of harmful greenhouse gas.

"It is not defined what kind of financial incentive you are talking about. So, we would like to know about what is that financial incentive," the Indian negotiator said and urged the developed nations not to come up with some kind of formula after the ongoing discussions and use it as a "ploy" against the developing nations.

India, which suggested two baseline years for bringing down the consumption of HFC by the developing countries, sought to distance itself from China, saying, "we will be in the category two" of developing nations.

India is in favour of having two different HFC phase-down schedule for developing countries -- one for China and whoever else wants to join China and other for the remaining developing countries.

China is currently the world's largest producer of HFCs and consumes 20 times more than India.

In the informal meetings held on the sidelines of the Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) on Saturday, India agreed to consider preponing the baseline to 2025 and 2026 and cut HFC consumption by 10 per cent by 2032, if developed countries agree to freeze their HFC consumption by 2016 and reduce HFC consumption by 70 per cent by 2026 or 2027.

Currently, developed countries are planning to reduce their HFC consumption by 70 per cent by 2030.

In the past, India had proposed baseline for developing countries as average consumption of HFCs in year 2028, 2029 and 2030 and freeze year of 2031.

Meanwhile, differences have cropped up among developed countries in the talks in the Rwandan capital to save earth from HFCs with Russia distancing itself from such nations' proposal for a single baseline for them to phase down the harmful refrigerant gas.

Voicing its differences with developed nations on the contentious issue, Russian negotiator, in a contact group meeting held on the sidelines of the Meeting of the Parties on Montreal Protocol Tuesday, said his country would require a more lenient baseline than the one currently proposed by Article 2 countries including the US.