India received support from China in its ongoing battle with the World Trade Organization (WTO) over a subsidy programme for domestic solar panel makers.

“We support the position of India. Most of the countries are giving subsidies for development of renewable energy," China’s special representative for climate change affairs Xie Zhenhua told reporters after the two-day 22nd BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) ministerial meeting on climate change.

In February, India’s solar power programme ran into an unexpected problem after a WTO dispute settlement panel ruled that it violated global trade rules by imposing domestic content restrictions on the production of solar cells and modules as part of the National Solar Mission.

The ruling came three years after the US raised a trade dispute against India at the WTO, complaining that its domestic content requirement (DCR) measures violated core norms of trade-related investment provisions, national treatment provisions for treating imported products on a par with locally made products and financial subsidy rules (read the Mint story here).

India is preparing an appeal against the WTO ruling, environment minister Prakash Javadekar said after the ministerial meeting. “It is unfortunate when India has launched a very big 175GW (gigawatt) renewable energy programme... a very small portion of it is to be procured from the domestic manufacturers," he added. In June 2015, the National Democratic Alliance government increased India’s target for solar power by fivefold from 20,000 megawatts (MW) to 100GW by year 2022. In the run-up to the Paris climate summit in December, India announced the 175GW renewables target as part of its intended nationally determined contributions to combat climate change.

Meanwhile, Javadekar said it is an opportune time for the BASIC group to renew efforts to address climate change. “I feel glad that the Paris Agreement recognizes the imperatives of sustainable patterns of consumption and production, with developed countries taking the lead, and climate justice in strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty," he added, while highlighting that BASIC countries have started taking pre-2020 actions, more than what is expected and much beyond their capacity.

The BASIC nations in a joint statement said that they are looking forward to signing the Paris Agreement on 22 April and “expressed their will to initiate necessary domestic processes for ratification, acceptance or approval as soon as possible with a view to facilitate the timely entry into force of the agreement, and urged other countries to do so as well".

They underlined that the Paris Agreement recognizes the imperatives of sustainable patterns of consumption and production, with developed countries taking the lead, and the importance of climate justice, in strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change. They urged developed countries to scale up their level of financial support with a plan to achieve the goal of jointly providing $100 billion per year by 2020.

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