"there are few areas where cooperation is needed more than on the issues of climate change and clean energy,' said us President Bill Clinton, addressing a group of environmentalists and journalists at a meeting in Agra during his visit on March 22, 2000. The speech, which also promised to fund a series of energy projects in India, followed the signing of a joint statement on cooperation in energy and environment between Indian minister of external affairs Jaswant Singh and us Secretary of State Madeleine Albright earlier that day.

The agreement, under which a joint consultative group on energy and environment will be set up, is the second of its kind in six months. In October 1999, Singh had signed a similar statement on energy and environment with visiting us energy secretary Bill Richardson. This eagerness on part of the us to engage India in energy projects is not without cause. Under the Kyoto Protocol of the un Framework Convention on Climate Change ( fccc ), the us has to show a reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions, mostly carbon dioxide, by seven per cent compared to 1990 levels, by the 2008-2012 period.

Despite being the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases ( ghg ), the us is unwilling to make these reductions domestically. Instead, it wants to make ghg reductions in developing countries under an emissions trading mechanism called the