India’s Effort Towards a Greener World

What is the issue?

Despite challenges, India is setting a global example in meeting its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC)

What is INDC?

• An INDC is a public pledge from a country on how it plans to play its part in post-2020 collective action on climate change.
• These contributions are to be achieved before 2030.
• It was adopted at  UNFCCC  COP21 in Paris in December 2015
• India committed to achieve the following three targets(INDC)
  1. India’s greenhouse gas emission intensity of its GDP will be reduced by 33-35 % below 2005 levels by 2030.
  2. 40 % of India’s power capacity would be based on non-fossil fuel sources.
  3. India will create an additional ‘carbon sink’ of 2.5 to 3 billion tons of Co2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.

What is India’s progress with respect to the targets?

• Reduced the emission intensity of GDP by 24% between 2005-2016
• Produced 38.18% of electricity from non-fossil fuel-based sources by November 2020.
• These targets were achieved with only 2% out of the U.S.$100 billion committed to developing nations in Copenhagen (2009)
• India’s per capita CO₂ emissions is 1.6 tonnes/person in 2012 which is less than the world average.
• By December 2020, India was the only G20 nation compliant with the agreement
• India has been ranked within the top 10 for two years consecutively in the Climate Change Performance Index

What is the progress of other countries?

• China, the world’s largest GHG emitter  targets carbon neutrality by 2060
• U.S. rejoined the Paris Agreement and committed to reach net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2050
• But at the current rate, both China and the U.S. could emit 5times more than India in 2030

What efforts have been taken by India?

• India is implementing an extensive renewable energy expansion programmes to achieve 175 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022 and 450 GW by 2030.
• Government announced several green measures, including
  • $26.5-billion investment in biogas and cleaner fuels
  • $3.5 billion in incentives for producing efficient solar photovoltaic (PV) and advanced chemistry cell battery
  • $780 million towards an afforestation programme
• Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All (UJALA) scheme , the world’s largest zero-subsidy LED bulb programme for domestic consumers  has been implemented
• India provided leadership for setting up the International Solar Alliance, a coalition of solar-resource-rich countries
• India initiated the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), a multi-stakeholder global partnership to promote the resilience of infrastructure systems to climate and disaster risks

Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure is a partnership of governments, United Nations agencies, multilateral development banks, the private sector, and knowledge institutions

Source: The Hindu