As the Copenhagen climate change summit in December begins to dominate the global agenda, China is trying to pull off a delicate balancing act.

On the one hand it is holding firm against international pressure to sign up to specific targets for reducing carbon emissions or to set a date for when its emissions might peak, as it believes this could curtail its economic development.

NEW DELHI: Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday asserted that

David Adam

The draft agreement being discussed ahead of December

WHILE we are yet to ascertain whether aerosols are warming or cooling our planet, a scientific team has traced a new source: deciduous trees. These are plants that shed their leaves seasonally. So far aerosols were described as particles of pollutants like sulphur dioxide, black carbon (soot) and sea salt that remain suspended in the air. Deciduous plants release around 500 teragrammes

At the Group of 20 summit in April, climate change merited barely a passing reference - it was the 28th out of 29 points listed in the final communiqu

Lauding India

The road to global cooperation on climate change mitigation at the forthcoming Copenhagen Summit is currently gridlocked by an apparent direct clash of interests between the mitigation priorities of the developed countries and the growth priorities of the developing world.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh commended the commitments made by Chinese President Hu Jintao during the high-level Climate Change Summit here and said India can learn lessons from China to help save the planet.

As the Copenhagen Conference on climate change draws nearer, South Asia, which appears poised for severe threats from the impacts of climate change, faces a stiff challenge on two fronts.

For one, South Asia