India today unveiled a climate action plan targeting 33-35 per cent reduction in carbon emission levels over a 15-year period ending 2030, in what it termed as a fair and balanced commitment to protect the environment, based on its own agenda for economic development.
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India on October 2 submitted its voluntary emissions-related target to the secretariat at United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as part of the preparation for the annual summit scheduled to be held in Paris later this year.
India, the world’s third-largest polluter, submitted on Thursday the necessary documents that would detail their plan to reduce their carbon emission by as much as 35 percent.
“Secondly, we will increase our non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by upto 40 per cent”, Javadekar said.
India is experimenting, said the submission, with a careful mix of market mechanisms together with fiscal instruments and regulatory interventions to mobilise finances for climate change.
Despite these commitments, India has a poor record of fixing infrastructure and environmentalists fear that India’s emissions will rise rapidly as the use of cars, air travel and air conditioning grows among its 1.2 billion people. As global leaders head to Paris this December, India and other countries have laid strong foundation for greater global cooperation on climate action.
Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s climate chief, hailed the wide participation as a sign that Paris could be a “turning point” towards 2C, the level accepted by governments as the threshold beyond which the Earth would face unsafe changes including more droughts, extinctions, floods and rising seas.
While India did not promise any absolute cuts in emissions, it vowed to slash carbon intensity – the amount of pollution per dollar of GDP.
The country also pledged that, by this time, 40 percent of its electricity would come from more environment-friendly sources such as solar and wind power.
Preliminary estimates indicate India would need to spend around $206 billion between 2015 and 2030 to adapt to the effects of climate change, the submission said.
Climate change has become a major cause of concern globally as the adverse impact is hitting vast swathes of populations increasingly. “This clearly puts the onus on developed countries to meet their obligations of providing public finance and technology transfer to developing and least-developed countries”, Chachra said.
“From all angles, India’s INDC is as good as China’s and better than the US’ considering that both these countries have higher emissions than India”, said Chandra Bhushan from the Centre for Science and Environment.
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In its plan, the government acknowledged that coal would continue to be India’s primary source of power, though it pledged to “aggressively” develop hydro and nuclear power capabilities.
