Letter to The Prime Minister on the National Water Mission
In finalizing India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) and the various missions, we would like you to instruct the advisory committee to delve into some of the concerns and initiate a wide-spread participatory process to take the National Water Mission ahead. We are also pointing some general concerns about the NAPCC for your kind consideration.
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CLAP for Himachal: Towards the First Carbon Neutral State in India The effects of global climate change are being felt in Himachal Pradesh, located in the ecologically fragile region of the Himalayas – glaciers are melting at a faster rate, snowfall is delayed and moving to higher altitudes, crops are failing, and there is an increase in the occurrence of landslides, droughts and unseasonal flash floods... |
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WHILE inaugurating the Indian Science Congress, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made what must be one of the greatest understatements of the decade. He said “very limited” progress was achieved at the Copenhagen conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and nobody was “fully satisfied” with the outcome...
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India Starts to Take on Climate Change by Malini Mehra, Worldwatch.org, 01 January 2009 In 2009, the eyes of the world will be on China, India, and the United States. The threat of climate change is now so great, and dealing with it effectively is so central to the future of national economies, that new scripts are being called for. The role of the United States as the world's single largest polluter in per capita terms remains pivotal. But China and India are now assuming an importance they did not have in 1997, when the world came together in Kyoto to do a deal on climate change.
Research on climate change in India is in its infancy
The Hindu, 24th March 2009 Global warming may be an irreversible phenomenon with catastrophic consequences on livelihoods, but research in India on climate change and its impact is in its “infancy” and scientific projection models “weak to put it mildly,” according to N.H. Ravindranath, professor at the Centre for Sustainable Technologies, Indian Institute of Science (IISc).
Manmohan pushes convergence of per capita emissions by Siddharth Varadarajan, The Hindu, 26th October 2008 In line with the NAPCC, the PM made a renewed pitch for a global “operational strategy” aimed at equalising the amount of per capita greenhouse gas emissions from developed and developing countries.
National Action Plan On Climate Change Government Of India Prime Minister's Council On Climate Change, 01 July 2008 Maintaining a high growth rate is essential forincreasing living standards of the vast majority of ourpeople and reducing their vulnerability to theimpacts of climate change. In order to achieve a sus-tainable development path that simultaneouslyadvances economic and environmental objectives,the National Action Plan for Climate Change(NAPCC) will be guided by the following principles:• Protecting the poor and vulnerable sections ofsociety through an inclusive and sustainable development strategy, sensitive to climate change.
Government of India Submission to UNFCCC on enhancing action on adaptation The UNFCCC has given equal importance to both adaptation and mitigation as part of the response to climate change. Articles 4.1(e), 4.4, 4.8 and 4.9 provide the basic framework and outline the responsibilities of the different Parties. The Marrakech Accords at COP7 (2001) brought the need and urgency for adaptation to the foreground in the UNFCCC negotiations. They identified the need for predictable and adequate levels of funding for Parties not included in Annex I and the need to develop appropriate modalities for burden sharing among Parties included in Annex II1. Three new funds2 were established under COP7 to support adaptation activities. 183 areas of assistance on adaptation were identified, including for GEF funding and process of development of National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) for LDCs were also achieved under COP7.nhancing action on adaptation Government of India Submission on Financing Architecture for Meeting Financial Commitments Under The UNFCCC
Addressing the impact of climate change and climate variability by raising adaptive capacity i.e. protecting people from climatic adversity; and avoiding the large scale world-wide climate hazards linked to anthropogenic activities i.e. protecting the climate from the production and consumption patterns of people by mitigating GHG emissions are the two major public goods challenges of our time. The current global architecture for delivering and financing these public goods is mandated under the multilaterally negotiated United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
“measurable, reportable and verifiable nationally appropriate commitments or actions, including quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives, by all developed country Parties, while ensuring the comparability of efforts among them…”
Government of India Submission to UNFCCC on Long Term Co-operative Action
“ A shared vision for long-term cooperative action, including a long-term goal for emission reductions, to achieve the ultimate objective of the Convention, in accordance with the provisions and principles of the Convention, in particular the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities Government of India
Submission to UNFCCC on Technology Transfer Mechanism Enhanced mitigation and adaptation under the UNFCCC requires an acceleration in the development, deployment, adoption, diffusion and transfer of environmentally sound technologies among all Parties, particularly from Annex II Parties to non-Annex I Parties, in order to avoid the lock-in effects of non-environmentally sound technologies on developing country parties, and to promote their shift to sustainable development paths, thus enhancing the goals of the Convention. There is a critical and urgent need to provide access to technology for adaptation at a regional and national level, enabled by capacitybuilding and provision of new and additional funding to meet the costs of both integration of adaptation into the development process and stand-alone adaptation activities. by Shankar Sharma, Consultant to Electricity IndustryThirthahally, Karnataka.
The country is in urgent need of a paradigm shift in its priorities with regard to all the fundamental infrastructural sectors, including energy. In the energy sector, we have to: clearly differentiate our needs from wants; recognize the fact that fossil fuels are fast running out; improve the energy efficiency by a huge margin; harness the renewable energy sources to the optimum extent; and protect the fragile environment with a high degree of responsibility, so that we can hand it over to the next generations in as pure and healthy a condition as possible.
The climate system is a global, inter-locking one, and its many facets cannot be considered in isolation. However, this is precisely what the National Action Plan on Climate Change has done, writes Sudhirendar Sharma.
by Chetan Chauhan, Hindustan Times (New Delh), 11 November 2008
Aiyar said the local self-government institutions had a well-established machinery to deliver results, but the bureaucracy was more interested in creating missions to accommodate more bureaucrats. Blind spots in India's new National Action Plan on Climate Change by Rahul Goswami, Eco-Ethic, No.33-34,Septmber 2008 Instead of having a strongly articulated, clearly thought through vision, India's new National Action Plan on Climate Change has a basket of eight 'missions' and no durable plan that will include the poorest and most vulnerable Renewable energy offers real independence
by Jayalakshmi K, Deccan Herald, 26 July 2007 The grandiose plans of the Indian government to electrify the whole country by 2009 cant be achieved without a serious consideration of renewable energy. There are many initiatives the country can take to reduce carbon emissions without sacrificing its priority of economic development. Recognition of climate change as a significant universal environemntal challenge, has its origin in the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992. It's finding is based on human induced climate change caused due to rapid industrialization, burning of fossile fuel and overuse of resources like forest and land. United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-I) says that the ever increasing use of coal and oil to fuel a worldwide consumer society will make the process of climate change rapidly worse. Emission of gases from various sources increased the greenhouse gases like Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), and Nitrous Oxide (N2O).
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