India’s consent to the final accord on climate hammered out at the Copenhagen meet goes against the assurance Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh had given Parliament before his departure, said CPM leader Sitaram Yechury.

Yechury, who was part of the delegation to the climate summit, told Hindustan Times in an exclusive interview that the clause relating to ‘consultation and analysis’ of domestic action by countries to mitigate climate change — including action that was voluntarily undertaken, without international funding — went against Ramesh’s statement in Parliament that India would provide such information only to the United Nations.

“It amounts to intrusion into a country’s privacy,” he said. “Nobody is clear as to what ‘consultation and analysis’ actually mean. It will open a Pandora’s box.”

He also maintained the Copenhagen deal was unfair to the poor countries of the world. “The accord does not take the world anywhere,” Yechury said.

The interests of 80 per cent of the world’s population, who are most vulnerable to climate change, have been compromised.”

Most poor countries, he noted, wanted a maximum temperature rise to be fixed at 1.5 degrees C above pre industrial levels. However, the Copenhagen accord settled on 2 degrees, while, in the opinion of experts, temperatures could even rise by 3 degrees C given the weak mitigation efforts agreed on.

“Poor countries also wanted developed nations to reduce their emissions by 35 to 40 per cent of 1990 levels,” he said. “Instead the accord seeks only 20-25 per cent.”

The CPI(M) also on Sunday termed the Copenhagen Accord as “weak and deeply ambigious”, which had no legal binding to commit the industrialised nations for emission cuts.

“The leaders who gathered in Copenhagen have failed their people by not delivering an effective and equitable climate change agreement.”