Addressing environment ministers from all state governments, the Indian prime minister acknowledged the need for India to follow a sustainable growth strategy.
India,currently the world’s number four polluter, must invest in its own environmentally friendly technologies as a means to fight climate change, said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday. According to Reuters, the prime minister’s comment can be seen as an attempt to undercut demands by rich nations for India to do more to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The Indian government has resisted committing to emissions targets, saying it will take its own unilateral action to cut pollution. Singh’s statement also signaled that India was willing to invest money in the development of clean technologies in addition to what the country might get from rich countries. "Our growth strategy can be different. It must be different," the prime minister told a national conference on environment and forests in New Delhi, referring to decades of Western industrialization that is blamed for climate change. He said India's energy consumption will rise sharply in the coming decades as it tries to lift its population out of poverty, but stressed a different development path must be taken. "For this we need access to new technologies that are already available with developed countries. We must also make our own investments in new environment-friendly technologies," he said. Addressing environment ministers from all states, Singh acknowledged that the ''multiple environmental crises that confront our country have created an alarming situation'', and he asked state governments to curtail pollution, clean rivers and fight climate change. Describing climate change as a "major global challenge", he said India was conscious of its "responsibility to present and future generations" and would ensure the "ecological sustainabality of its development path
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