According to one of the UN's top climate experts, India will be unable to commit to greenhouse gas emission targets when the first phase of the Kyoto treaty, designed to combat global warming, ends in 2012.

Under the Kyoto climate change protocol, developed countries need to significantly reduce their greenhouse gas outputs. Developing countries such as India and China are exempt from the treaty's emission targets because they say their economies are too fragile to face environmental restrictions.

But Rajendra Pachauri, Indian chairman of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is warning that his country's energy-hungry economy is developing so fast that it may well be under pressure to join rich nations in efforts to lower emissions.