India, China in talks to monitor Himalayan glaciers
By IANSMonday, August 3, 2009
NEW DELHI - Setting aside speculation about strains in bilateral ties, India has said it is engaged in talks with China to monitor the glaciers in the Himalayas, a strategic border region, and plans to collaborate in climate change negotiations.
“We are talking to the Chinese about monitoring the Himalayan glaciers,” Minister for State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh told Britain’s Financial Times.
Ramesh’s remarks come ahead of the two-day boundary talks between India and China that start Aug 7.
Ramesh, however, clarified that India would not allow Chinese scientists “to climb all over India’s glaciers” but wanted a collaborative research programme on water resources between academic bodies of the two sides.
He underlined that New Delhi is open to dialogue on water resources with Beijing as the two countries had shared concerns.
The Himalayan glaciers feed seven of the world’s greatest rivers, including the Ganges and the Yangtze, and supply water to about 40 per cent of the world’s population.
Ramesh will go to China later this month to strike a deal with Beijing on climate change ahead of the UN summit in Copenhagen that aims at finding a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The minister said India and China could be a “countervailing power” in resisting legally binding caps on greenhouse emissions that has the potential to slow down the progress of the world’s two fastest growing economies.
Opposing legally binding emission caps, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told parliament recently that the Indian and Chinese positions are nearly identical, and we have been coordinating with that country”.
