July 7 (Bloomberg) -- Developed countries must bear “historic responsibility” for industrial emissions of greenhouse gases they have produced, India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said ahead of climate change talks this week.

“What we are witnessing today is the consequence of over two centuries of industrial activity and high consumption lifestyles in the developed world,” Singh said in a statement in New Delhi today before leaving for the Group of Eight summit in Italy. “It is the developing countries that are the worst affected by climate change.”

Climate change will feature at the meeting of G-8 countries and major developing nations in L’Aquila, Italy, beginning tomorrow. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said yesterday that the European Union will urge the world to accept a goal to restrict global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

A draft G-8 document last week showed the U.S. moving toward accepting the temperature goal, which it previously refused to do.

India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, has said he is talking to countries such as Brazil, China and South Africa on taking a common stand in international negotiations that richer countries like the U.S. and Britain must reduce their emissions 45 percent by the year 2020 from 1990 levels.

That level of reduction worldwide may be enough to ensure the global average temperature rises no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, according to a United Nations climate agency, which suggested a 25 percent-to-40 percent cut over the same three-decade period.

Fully Participate

Singh said India, which has more than 800 million people living on less than $2 a day, will participate in the climate negotiations within the outline of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Bali Action plan.

India has said it will reject any new treaty to limit global warming that makes the country reduce greenhouse-gas emissions because that will undermine its energy consumption, transportation and food security.

Cutting back on climate-warming gases is a measure that instead must be taken by industrialized countries, and India is mobilizing developing nations to push that case, Ramesh said on June 30 in New Delhi.

“India will not accept any emission-reduction target -- period,” Ramesh said. “This is a non-negotiable stand.”

The 27-nation European Union, promising a 20-percent reduction, Japan, pledging an 8 percent cut, and the U.S., committed to return to 1990 levels by 2020, all fall below the UN target for gases such as carbon dioxide.

Global Treaty

More than 190 nations are negotiating a global climate treaty to reduce gas emissions and replace the expiring 1997 Kyoto Protocol limits. Countries plan to wrap up negotiations and sign the new treaty in Copenhagen by late December.

India wants funds and access to green technology for developing countries to be part of the new global accord.

Asia’s third-biggest economy in June unveiled a plan to form eight commissions to improve energy efficiency and mitigate the impact of climate change.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bibhudatta Pradhan in New Delhi at bpradhan@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 7, 2009 04:33 EDT