India Challenges Developed Countries On Sustainable Development, Consumption

UNITED NATIONS: India has challenged developed countries to take the lead in ensuring sustainable patterns of consumption as developing countries grapple with the problem of eradicating poverty.

Amit Narang, a counsellor at India's UN Mission said Sustainability demands that developed countries, which bear the historical responsibility for climate change and have better financial and technological resources at their command take the lead in moving their economies towards sustainable patterns of consumption and production.

In his address to the UN General Assembly committee that deals with economic and financial issues, he brought out the stark differences in the approaches of developed and developing countries.

Sustainable development is, however, not merely about minimising the environmental impacts of development, he said.

At the heart of the global quest for sustainable development must be, first and foremost, the moral, economic and political obligation to end poverty and eradicate want and hunger, Narang added.

Developed nations' reckless consumption and fossil-fuel intensive model of development followed over the past century has left the planet on the edge of its safe operating boundaries, he said. If they moved toward sustainable economies, they would create the demand and conditions necessary for alternative and environment-friendly technologies to be become mainstream. That, in turn, he said, would also allow the necessary ecological space for developing countries to grow and provide basic human development to their peoples.

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