New Delhi: Hitting out at the industrial nations for demanding greater commitments from developing countries for preventing climate change, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on October 30 said that the suggestion was "misplaced" in view of lower green house gas emissions and per capita incomes in the third world.

"There have been suggestions that a process should commence to enhance commitments of developing countries on mitigating climate change beyond that included in the convention. This suggestion is misplaced for several reasons," Vajpayee told the eighth UN Conference on Climate Change.

Asking the advanced nations to pump more funds to enhance capacity building in developing countries, Vajpayee said that developing countries do not have adequate resources even to meet their basic human needs.

"Climate change mitigation will bring additional strain to the already fragile economies of the developing countries," he said.

Maintaining that the contribution of all developing countries to greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations is very little compared to industrialised nations, the Prime Minister said, "Tragically, however, developing countries will bear a disproportionate burden of the adverse impacts of climate change."

He said that the GHG intensity of the developing economies at purchasing power parity is low and, in any case, not higher than that of the industrialised countries. "Thus the assertion that developing countries generate GHG emissions is not based on facts," he said.

PTI