PM unveils national action plan on climate change
30 Jun 2008
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh today released India's 'national action plan on climate change in New Delhi, prepared under the guidance and direction of the prime minister's council on climate change.
Members of the prime minister's council on climate change, senior members of the union cabinet, environmental activists and senior government officials, were present on the occasion.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr Singh said that the release of the plan reflected the importance the government has attached to mobilising its energies to meet the challenge of climate change.
The national action plan focuses attention of eight 'priority national missions':
1. Solar energy
2. Enhanced energy efficiency
3. Sustainable habitat
4. Conserving water
5. Sustaining the Himalayan ecosystem
6. A ''green India''
7. Sustainable agriculture
8. Strategic knowledge platform for climate change
The national mission on solar energy, occupies a pre-eminent place, whose success, the prime minister said, has the potential of transforming the face of India.
Prime minister emphasised the global dimension of the challenge of climate change, which demands a global and cooperative effort on the basis of the principle of equity. India, he said, was ready to play its role as a responsible member of the international community and to make its own contribution.
Dr Singgh added that India believed that every citizen of this planet should have an equal share of the planetary atmospheric space and therefore, long-term convergence of per capita GHG emissions was the only equitable basis for a global agreement to tackle climate change. In this context, the Prime Minister reaffirmed India's pledge that as it pursued sustainable development, its per capita GHC emissions would not exceed the per capita GHG emissions of developed countries, despite our developmental imperatives.
Prime Minister clarified that the National Action Plan would evolve and change in the light of changing circumstances and therefore invited broader interaction with civil society as a means to further improve the various elements of the Plan.
In his concluding remarks the Prime Minister recalled Mahatma Gandhi's sage advice : ''The earth has enough resources to meet the needs of people, but will never have enough to serve their greed''.
(See full text of Dr Manmohan Singh's address on National Action Plan on Climate Change)
