India is drafting a climate change strategy due next month, ahead of a key United Nations meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in December to begin talks on post-2012 emissions-cuts commitments.

"India shouldn't emulate the path that has been established by developed countries. It would be suicide for us," Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told AFP in an interview.

"If China and India were to follow the same pattern of development you are going to have serious conflict. Where are all the resources going to come from?"

As head of a body set up by the United Nations Environment Programme and the UN's World Meteorological Organisation to evaluate the available science on climate change, Pachauri has overseen the publication of a long-awaited report on global warming this year.

It pronounced that the earth's recent warming was more than 90 percent likely to be man-made.

He is also on India's newly created Council on Climate Change, responsible for coming up with a national strategy before the December talks that will seek to extend or replace the 10-year-old Kyoto Protocol.

That agreement, the only global accord to set specific targets for reducing emissions, required industrialised countries to cut their output of six greenhouse gases by about five percent from their 1990 levels by 2012.

But US President George W. Bush cited the lack of binding commitments on developing countries such as India and China as a key limitation of the treaty.

While per capita emissions are low in these countries -- the average Indian produces one tonne of carbon dioxide to the average American's 20 tonnes -- their huge populations put them among the world's top five emitters.

By 2030, the US Department of Energy estimates that China will be responsible for a quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions while India will account for five percent, slightly up from four percent now.

India, like China, says that having to meet binding cuts now will prevent it from raising its people out of poverty as rich countries have already done on the back of industrial growth fuelled by coal, oil and gas.

Per capita income in India, which has a billion-plus population, hovers at just above 700 dollars.

Pachauri, who along with his IPCC has been mentioned as a possible contender for this year's Nobel Peace Prize due to be announced Friday, has said that for the moment the onus to make the deepest emissions cuts should be on the richer countries that have been long-term major emitters.

But it is in India's -- and China's -- self-interest to invest in energy efficiency as they develop, the Indian scientist and economist said.

"The richer sections of this country are already doing what richer countries do. We need to bring about efficiencies across the board -- exploit renewable technologies on a massive scale," said Pachauri, 67.

"That would also mean good business for us if we are ahead of the path" in developing low-emissions business practices.

Pachauri said that market incentives could achieve environmental goals but that "you need to design them intelligently." Incentives include subsidies for making ethanol from corn.

Pachauri says his focus on the environment grew from a childhood in India's Himalayan foothills in the 1950s, before development or tourism hit.

"It was so beautiful and unpolluted when I was a child," said Pachauri. "One saw the beauty of nature at its most pristine. It gets into your soul and you don't lose that."

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