Inaugurating a four-day `Delhi Sustainable Development Summit' (DSDS) as part of the run-up to the World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held at Johannesburg, South Africa, in August, he particularly referred to the "slow and inadequate progress" in operationalising the mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and their ratification. He said that this leaves several doubts on the seriousness of leading industrialised countries to mitigate this problem.

In this regard, he observed that even while India and other developing countries have taken several measures to reduce pollution, the effect of climate change could, however, only get worse, unless the biggest polluters take effective steps to curb emissions.

He also drew attention to the reluctance of the developed world in making their contributions for the implementation of the 1992 Rio Summit's Agenda 21 in developing countries. Pointing out that the developed world was required to bear only one-third of the $600 billion that was estimated to be needed for implementation of the Agenda, he regretted that they are not even fulfilling this lesser obligation.

He said there was a need for the developed world to give more resources, both directly through higher aids and indirectly by opening their markets to poorer nations. Imposing environmental or labour restrictions or for that matter limiting the free movement of goods and services in the name of selective aspects of sustainable development would only intensify poverty in developing countries.

He emphasised that the foremost task in sustainable development was to help the poor and the deprived to realise their aspirations for a better life and wanted the concept of sustainable development to be extended to encompass the rights of all peoples to conservation and furthering their cultural heritage, comprising their history, their historical treasures, their arts, their languages and their societal and family organisation. The global trading regime and multilateral development agencies should respect and indeed further this broader concept.

He said that the Johannesburg Summit should come up with priority actions and a consensus for harnessing the forces of globalisation and the regime of sustainable development to the goal of abolishing poverty. He said that if we focus on the challenge faced by the most deprived communities in the world, the world would surely become a better place.