India Climate Emission goals for 2020

India Climate Emission goals for 2020



 
May 2007 -   India's current environmental 
policies will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 25 percent 
by the year 2020, the country's top environmental official said Monday. 
Dr. Pradipto Ghosh, Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Forests, told 
reporters that India’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is 
only four percent. 
India as a developing country does not have any legally binding 
commitments to reduce greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol, but Dr. 
Ghosh said India is "following a sustainable development path, ensuring 
energy conservation, improved energy efficiency in various sectors and use 
of renewable energy." 

India's Environment Secretary Pradipto Ghosh holds a news conference in 
New Delhi. May 2007 - . 
India's existing legislative and policy framework, together with energy 
efficiency measures, energy conservation, power sector reforms, fuel 
switching to cleaner energy, and afforestation are all helping to address 
India's contribution to global warming, he said. 
The world's second most populous nation, in 2001 India ranked fifth in the 
world in carbon dioxide emissions, behind the United States, China, Russia 
and Japan. 
India's non-participation in the Kyoto Protocol has been cited as a major 
reason behind the opposition to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol by several 
signatories, including the United States. 
Although India's carbon emissions stood at only 80 percent of Japan's 
total and less than one-sixth of the United States' carbon emissions that 
same year, the rapid growth of India's carbon emissions - in combination 
with its exclusion from the Protocol - is the main point of controversy. 
Ghosh defended India's nonparticipation, saying that developing countries, 
due to their historical and current low per capita levels of greenhouse 
gas emissions, are not to blame for the problem of global warming. 
Still, Ghosh said proudly that India is an "energy responsible country, 
and we have done more than any other developing country." 
India has largest number of projects under the protocol's Clean 
Development Mechanism with more than 600 projects approved so far, the 
environment secretary said. 
Industrialized countries with targets to meet under the Kyoto Protocol, 
can use the Clean Development Mechanism to obtain "certified emission 
reductions" by creating projects in countries without targets, such as 
India. These projects must reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions 
into the atmosphere. 
"Our modelling approaches show the effect of many of our policies taken 
together that the year 2020 will result in a more than a 25 percent 
decrease in greenhouse gas emissions," said Ghosh. 
At next week's G8 summit in Germany, India and other large developing 
countries are likely to face pressure to do more to cut their greenhouse 
gas emissions. 
India is one of the so-called "outreach countries" also including Brazil, 
China, Mexico and South Africa. These countries have been invited to meet 
the G8 states at the Summit in Heiligendamm because they "are being 
integrated into global responsibility," the German government said last 
week.    

       
      

---