India and Climate Change

India has also played a positive and constructive role in the successive Conferences of Parties under the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC). For developing countries like India, the issue of climate change goes beyond environmental sustainability and directly impacts their overriding priorities of development and poverty eradication. India believes that the global efforts to address climate change must be in full accordance with the principles and provisions of the Convention, in particular the principles of ‘equity’ and ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’. 

For a country like India, with one of the smallest carbon foot-prints in the world, the first and overriding priority is to pursue economic development, to alleviate poverty and to address its severe energy defiit. India, with 17% of the world’s population, contributes only 4% of the total global Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions. In per capita terms, India’s CO2 emissions are only about a quarter of the global average.

Despite its huge developmental challenges, India remains fully committed to contributing to the global action on climate change through ambitious domestic actions. India has declared its commitment to keep its per capita emissions below the average per capita emissions of developed countries. The announcement to take on a voluntary target of reducing the emissions intensity of India’s GDP by 20-25% by 2020 in comparison to the 2005 level is a further manifestation of the seriousness with which India wants to contribute to the global action on climate change.

India played a leading and constructive role in the 18th Conference of Parties (COP-18) to the UNFCCC in Doha, Qatar held in December 2012. India has welcomed the outcome of the Doha Conference, in particular the decision to operationalize the 2nd commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol albeit with low level of mitigation ambition. India hopes that the mitigation targets pledged by developed country parties under the 2nd commitment period will be revised upwards in 2014 as agreed at Doha and that 2nd commitment period will be ratified by parties as soon as possible for it to enter into force at the earliest. India is engaging constructively in the plan of work that has been agreed for further work in 2013 under the Adhoc Working Group on Durban Platform. India believes that the remit of the Durban Platform is the enhanced implementation of the Convention in the post-2020 period, not the renegotiation or reinterpretation of its principles and provisions.