UN Trade Forum event: Decouple trade policy from green goals: Goyal

Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal on Monday pitched for decoupling trade policy from environmental goals, and called on the developed world to not use trade “as a means to foist conditionalities” on poor and developing nations.

Speaking at a virtual event of the UN Trade Forum, Goyal said: “I do believe we have to decouple trade policy and green goals. Let the trade policy look for more inclusive growth all over the world and let us all work towards what my Prime Minister has said climate justice and sustainable lifestyle.”

He hoped that the developed world “would not use the interplay of trade and climate challenges too much”. Trade, Goyal stressed, should allow all countries to prosper and there should be no barriers in it. The United Nations and other multilateral agencies should, instead, focus on getting the world together to fulfil their commitments around climate change.

Pushing for “differentiated responsibilities” towards climate change, Goyal highlighted how developed countries have long used the carbons space to produce low-cost energy, which helped them develop infrastructure and bring prosperity to their people. India, on the contrary, has had very little per-capita contribution to the global carbon emissions, he asserted. “I think it’s important that there should be differentiated responsibilities when it comes to the less-developed or the developing world and the developed countries,” he said.

Still, India, which played an important role in gathering a climate goal consensus in Paris, “would love to do better than what we have committed there”. “We are confident we would exceed our commitment.”

India has been maintaining that it is not a polluter and the cause of climate change. It has voluntarily committed to trimming greenhouse gas emission intensity of its GDP by 33-35% below 2005 levels by 2030.