France supports India’s plan to set up an International Solar Alliance that would facilitate access to low carbon energy, said French Foreign Minister laurent Fabius on Friday. According to him, this will embody the paradigm shift that India has called for in order to fight climate change.
The French Minister emphasised that such ambitious international partnership can be forged on challenges of development and feasible solutions to climate change. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President François Hollande will jointly launch the International Solar Alliance proposed by India on November 30.
Fabius pointed out that support must be garnered from as many nations as possible for the alliance to mobilise the necessary investments and bring down the cost of technology.
Fabius termed India as a key player in the climate negotiations and said solutions cannot be reached without consensus among important nations like India.
“I heard many inspiring proposals from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prakash Javadekar, notably on international cooperation, infusion of technology and scaling up of capacity building. We believe India will bring decisive solutions on many issues,” said Fabius during a joint Press conference with Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday.
He termed the meeting with the Prime Minister as ‘friendly’ and ‘fruitful’. “The discussions were mainly on COP21 as the Prime Minister is very committed to sustainable development of India as well as the world,” he said.
Amongst the key subjects discussed between the PM and the French Foreign Minister include finance, technology sharing, the issue of differentiation, transparency and evaluation.
“The question of finance is very important because if we want all countries to go towards low carbon emissions, there has to be resources to finance them. He said since all countries are not in the same situation, we have to ask the well-off countries for help,” he added.
He said that both President Hollande and Modi have decided to preface a common book which is summary of many statements made in different countries along the centuries by different thinkers and authors about climate change which will be distributed in COP21.
Regarding invitation to Heads of States at the beginning of the summit, Fabius pointed out that it was necessary to give a political impulse to the negotiations in the beginning itself to make Paris a success and not a failure as the Copenhagen Climate Summit of 2009.
“The agreement will be discussed by negotiators and Ministers. But we need political impulse and nobody can do it more properly than the Heads of States. They will speak powerfully. We want to avoid the Copenhagen syndrome at all cost”, he said.