New Delhi, Dec. 2: A global climate change conference opens in Bali, Indonesia, tomorrow with India under pressure to signal its intent to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to global warming.

But the UN conference on climate change — expected to draw 10,000 delegates from 180 countries — also comes at a time when India has all but pitched an emissions-related challenge to the developed countries.

UN officials are hoping the 11 days of negotiations will yield a “roadmap” for a new international agreement on enhanced global action to reduce emissions and fight climate change in the period after 2012.

“The conference will not deliver a fully negotiated and agreed climate deal, but is aimed at setting the necessary wheels in motion,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The developed countries want large emitters among the developing countries like China, India and Brazil to work towards reducing emissions.

“India is... important. What India decides to do is going to have a huge impact on the world’s ability to respond,” British environment minister Hilary Benn said.

Benn, who was in India for talks on climate change earlier this week, said the UK has shown it is possible to decouple economic growth from emissions.

The UK has experienced a 25 per cent growth over the past decade, but reduced its emissions by nearly 7 per cent. The UK and the European Union have pledged more cuts.

Even if the developed countries were to have zero carbon by 2030, the world would still face a 3 degrees Celsius rise in temperature, Benn told The Telegraph.

India is among the world’s top five emitters of carbon dioxide — a gas that traps heat from the sun, warming the planet — with annual emissions of 1,300 million tonnes in 2004. The US emitted 6,000 million tonnes, but India’s per capita emission is 1.2, in contrast with 20 for the US, and about 10 for Russia and Japan.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had earlier this year said India would be willing to accept the obligation that its per capita emissions would never exceed that of developed countries.

“If developed countries succeed in reducing their per capita emissions, this would exert pressure and will be a source of incentive for all of us as well,” Singh had said at the Fortune Global Forum in New Delhi.

The Bali negotiations will centre on how to distribute responsibilities for emission cuts after 2012 — the year the first phase of commitment under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol expires.

The Kyoto Protocol required developed countries to cut emissions by specific targets, but developing countries were exempt from emission reductions. The US has not ratified the Protocol.

Environmental groups say it’s time India also articulates its intent to voluntarily reduce emissions.

“The rich countries have to make the highest emission cuts, but India could do its bit,” said Srinivas Krishnaswamy, a climate change expert with Greenpeace India and a delegate at Bali.

“India could improve energy efficiency through new technologies and expand renewable energy and ask the rich countries to pay for the incremental costs to do this rather than pursue traditional energy routes,” he said.

Global funding mechanisms facilitate payments for new technologies from the developed countries to developing countries. But India has been arguing for improved access to clean technologies.

Greenpeace has asked India to start by banning the incandescent bulb and shifting to compact flourescent lamps — expensive but highly efficient.

A UNDP report last week urged developed countries to aim at 80 per cent cuts, and large developing countries to aim at 20 per cent cuts by 2050.

Scientists have warned that global warming could cause sea levels to rise, melt glaciers, trigger extreme weather events, and harm crops.