India’s per capita carbon dioxide emissions will increase by nearly three-fold to 3.5 tonnes by 2030, the Economic Survey 2009-10 said on Thursday.
“India’s Five-Year Plans include a strategy for sustainable growth resulting in low-carbon sustainable development. The Eleventh Five-Year Plan includes an indicative target of increasing energy efficiency by 20 per cent by 2016-17,” the Survey, tabled in Parliament, said.
According to the Planning Commission’s estimates, emission intensity declined by 17.6 per cent between 1990 and 2005, and a further 20-25 per cent reduction is possible from 2005 to 2020, it added.
“This will require that necessary actions in specific sectors are undertaken to reduce emission intensity with necessary provisions of financial and technological resources, including domestic and international support, for achieving low-carbon sustainable development,” the Survey noted.
However, despite various possible measures, the country’s carbon emission level will increase gradually.
“Its (India’s) climate modelling studies show that its per capita emissions will be around 2-2.5 tonnes of carbon- dioxide equivalent by 2020 and around 3-3.5 tonnes of carbon- dioxide equivalent by 2030, compared to around 1-1.2 tonnes presently,” the Survey said.
The pre-Budget survey pointed out that India contributes about 4 per cent of the total global CO2 emissions and the country has conveyed that per capita emission levels would never exceed the average levels of developed countries.
The world leaders met at Copenhagen in December 2009 to discuss and reach at an outcome on climate change issues.
However, the conference ended without adopting any result from the discussions, but only took note of ‘Copenhagen Accord’. It was decided to carry forward the negotiations in Mexico from November 29 to December 10, 2010.
The Survey said that despite commitments made by developed countries as inscribed in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, emissions from most of the three dozen-odd industrialised nations of Annex 1, except a few European countries, have been rising since 1990.
In order to reduce carbon emissions from India, the government currently spends over 2.6 per cent of the GDP on adaptation to climate variability, with specific areas of concern in agriculture, water resources, forests, health and sanitation, coastal zone infrastructure and extreme events.
“India has prepared a comprehensive National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) with a view to achieving sustainable development with co-benefit in terms of climate change,” it said, adding eight national missions on various fields, including solar energy, sustainable agriculture, Himalayan eco-system and strategic knowledge for climate change form the core of the action plan.
