Modi keeps NGOs, industries out of climate committee

A year before the crucial UN climate summit in Paris to finalise the global emission cut treaty, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reconstituted his advisory panel on climate change, dropping industry representatives and green activists.

Instead, he included one of India's most experienced negotiators on climate change
issues, presumably for receiving advises on what position India would take at the global fora. Headed by Modi, the 18-member panel has J M Mouskar, a retired environment ministry official who served as India's principle negotiator on climate change till his retirement in 2011.

Those who were dropped included industrialist Ratan Tata and Centre for Science and Environment director Sunita Narain.

The previous panel, set up by then prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2007, had 23 members. Others who could not find a place in the new committee are former environment secretary Pradipto Ghosh; V Krishnamurthy, former chairman of national manufacturing competitiveness council; R Chidambaram, former principal scientific adviser to the prime minister and C Rangarajan, former chief of Singh’s economic advisory council.
Two veteran journalists, Raj Chengappa and R Ramachandran, too, were part of the previous panel but could not find a place in the new one.

Those who retained their place are R K Pachauri, who heads The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri); Ajay Mathur, chairman of Bureau of Energy Efficiency, economist Nitin Desai and former diplomat Chandrasekhar Dasgupta, who too is associated with Teri.

The Ministry of External Affairs, Finance, Environment and Forest, Agriculture, Water Resources, Urban Development, Science and Technology, and Coal and Power will be part of the team. The bureaucracy is represented by the Cabinet Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Environment secretary.

The advisory panel is being reconstituted a year before the summit when the world will have to decide on a new emission-cut treaty for major polluting nations.

While the rich nations are known culprits, there is pressure on emerging economies like India and China also to commit to emission cuts because of their large volume of green house gas emission.

The new panel would evolve “a coordinated response to issues relating to climate change at the national level” and provide “oversight for formulation of action plans in the area of assessment, adaptation and mitigation of climate change.”
Moreover, it would monitor implementation of key policy decisions.