Environment ministry objects to Plan panel roadmap to deal with climate change

NEW DELHI: Environment ministry has objected to the Planning Commission roadmap to deal with climate change in the Twelfth Plan. The ministry finds the Plan panel's approach to dealing with climate change to be lopsided, as it has focused on mitigation or reducing emission intensity of the economy and paid little attention to adapting to the adverse consequences of climate change.

The ministry has written to the Planning Commission making it clear that focusing solely on mitigation will not be practical for India. It has argued that framework document outlining the government's approach for the next five years would be incomplete and impractical if it did not address the issue of adaptation.

"The thrust of the Planning Commission's chapter on climate change is on the low carbon pathway. While that is important, we can't disregard adaptation. India has an overwhelmingly rural population, most of whom are dependent directly or indirectly on natural resources for their livelihood. So to devise an approach that doesn't have adaptation as a central component is to disregard the need to build resilience among rural poor, who are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change," a senior official said explaining the ministry's reservations.

The major thrust of the Planning Commission's approach, as spelt out in the draft chapter on climate change in the Twelfth plan document, is on low carbon strategies for inclusive growth. This is the outcome of the interim report submitted by the Expert Group on Low Carbon Strategies set up under the chairmanship of former Planning Commission member Kirit Parekh. The group was set up in the aftermath of the UN sponsored climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009. India had committed to reduce the emission intensity of its economy, that is carbon emission for every dollar of GDP, by 20 to 25% from 2000 levels by 2020. In keeping with this, the focus was on outlining low carbon strategies for major potential carbon mitigation sectors like power, transport, industry, building and forestry. "Even on mitigation, there is a need to work out costs, and measures, that hasn't been done," the official said.

With India attempting to push higher economic growth of 8.2%, there is a need to reduce the emission intensity of the economy, especially as India has consistently come under pressure from developed countries to take more stringent emission reduction measures. However, given that more than 800 million of the country's 1.2 billion live in rural India and depend on land and other natural resources for their livelihood, and some 300 million still live in abject poverty, not addressing ways to reduce their vulnerability to the adverse impact of climate change seems amiss. "Our thrust has to be much more on adaptation. We must address the needs of vulnerability management, livelihood enhancement, explore low scale economic opportunities for the poor and marginalized," an environment ministry official said.

However, it seems unlikely that the environment ministry's concerns will be addressed ahead of the full Planning Commission meeting on Saturday. The Plan panel is yet to respond to the issue raised by the ministry. It will be left to environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan to take up the matter and have the ministry's views incorporated in the final document.