India has announced that it is set to produce an “ambitious” Climate Commitment, or INDC, by the end of August. Environment Secretary Ashok Lavasa, who made the announcement, also noted that the INDC will include “raised energy efficiency targets for industry.”
He was speaking at the ‘Industry Consultation on India’s INDCs for Climate Change’ in Delhi, organized by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
Lavasa’s declaration is in line with recent pronouncements taken at the meeting of the Prime Minister’s council on climate change earlier this year, where the decision to enhance national missions under the National Action Plan for Climate Change was taken.
“The pre-2020 actions on mitigation and finance are important and need to be boosted and up-scaled. India is looking for clean coal technologies as well as coal is going to be a source of power for India in coming years,” said Lavasa.
However, the announcement didn’t come without a few heated blows directed at other nations who Lavasa believes are “not ambitious enough”. The environment secretary was critical Switzerland, Russia, the EU and even the United States.
Here, Lavasa noted that these nations represented a threat to the principle and that the “numbers offered by the developed countries are not ambitious enough though the developing countries are showing innovation in the way they present their contributions.”
Meanwhile, as India prepares its INDCs in consultation with industry stakeholders, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar is preparing to attend the two-day meeting of the Major Economies’ Forum on climate change later this year.
Before then, the Indian government is confident that it will b able to produce not just an ambitious, but inclusive INDC.
“The INDCs will cover not just mitigation but also adaptation. The Indian INDCs is expected to cover all areas and not just mitigation (reduction of emissions), such as adaptation, climate finance, technology and capacity building needs of the country,” Mr. R. S Prasad, Joint Secretary - Climate Change
Indian government had reported energy efficiency targets for 478 industrial units under under the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency.
Prasad also said the government is listing a list of technologies that would be needed for India to enhance its contributions to climate change during 2020-30.
Almost 190 countries are expected declare their National Commitments or Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) by October this year. These “contributions” are then going to form the basis of the December Paris summit.
India will be one of the country will get the hardest hit by climate change, with increased coastal flooding and melting Himalayan glaciers. Rising global temperatures would make water security an even greater problem in India-Pakistan relations. An ordinary increase in average global temperatures would cut agricultural output in India by 38%.
Although India has been a smaller emitter in relative terms until now, India will pass China’s population in the next decade, and it has barely begun its own industrial revolution. Delhi already has air pollution levels comparable to Beijing.
Forging an agreement in Paris will take bold leadership. Many now believe that strong trilateral collaboration between India, the US and China on emissions regulation, pricing, technology and investment is critically needed both in the lead up to the Paris summit, but also in the years to come, to ensure implementation of what we hope will be an ambitious agreement.
