India's National Action Plan on Climate Change

Table of Contents

Principles: The following are the guiding principles of NAPCC:

Approach: NAPCC identifies measures that promote development with co-benefits towards climate change.

Also development will be pursued ensuring that per capita GHG emission will at no point exceed that of the developed nations.

Eight National Missions: The NAPCC hinges on the development and use of new technologies. The focus will be on promoting understanding of climate change, adaptation and mitigation, energy efficiency and natural resource conservation. The eight missions which are the core of Plan are:

  1. National Solar Mission
  2. National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency
  3. National Mission on Sustainable Habitat
  4. National Water Mission
  5. National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem
  6. Nationa Mission for a Green India
  7. National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture
  8. National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change

These National Missions will be institutionalised by respective ministries and will be organized through inter-sectoral groups which include in addition to related ministries, Ministry of Finance and the Planning Commission, experts from industry, academia, and civil society. Each mission will be tasked to evolve specific objectives spanning the remaining years of the 11th Plan and the 12th Plan period 2012-13 to 2016-17.

National Solar Mission

A National Solar Mission will be launched to significantly increase the share of solar energy in the total energy mix while recognising the need to expand the scope of other renewable and non-fossil options such as nuclear energy, wind energy and biomass.

National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency

To enhance energy efficiency, four new initiatives will be put into place. These are:

  • A market based mechanism to enhance cost effectiveness of improvements in energy efficiency in energy-intensive large industries and facilities, through certification of energy savings that could be traded.
  • Accelerating the shift to energy efficiency appliances in designated sectors through innovative measures to make the products more affordable.
  • Creation of mechanisms that would help finance demand side management programmes in all sectors by capturing future energy savings.
  • Developing fiscal instruments to promote energy efficiency.

National Mission on Sustainable Habitat

A National Mission on Sustainable Habitat will be launched to make habitat sustainable through improvements in energy efficiency in buildings, management of solid waste and modal shift to public transport. The Mission will promote energy efficiency as an integral component of urban planning and urban renewal through three initiatives:

  • The Energy Conservation Building Code, which addresses the design of new and large commercial buildings to optimize their energy demand, will be extended in its applications and incentives provided for retooling existing building stock.
  • Recycling of material and urban waste management will be a major component of ecologically sustainable economic development.
  • Better urban planning and modal shift to public transport. Making long term transport plans will facilitate the growth of medium and small cities in ways that ensure efficient and convenient public transport.

In addition, the Mission will address the need to adapt to future climate change by improving the resilience of infrastructure, community based disaster management, and measure for improving the warning system for extreme weather events. Capacity building would be an important component of this Mission.

National Water Mission

India gets an average annual rain of 1197 mm, which amounts to a total precipitation of 4000 billion m3. However, 3000 billion m3 of this is lost due to run off, and only 1000 billiom m3 is available at surface and ground water resources. The annual per capita availablity of water is thus less than 1 million litres. This is about 10 % to 20 % of many industrialised countries. Many parts of India are water stresed and India is likely to be water scarce by 2050.

In India, groundwater accounts for nearly 40 % of the total available water resources in the country and meets nearly 55 % of irrigation requirements, 85 % of rural requirements, and 50 % of urban and industrial requirements. However, overexploitation of the resources has sharpely lowered the water table in many parts of the coutry, making them increasingly vilnerable to adverse impacts of climate change.

National Water Mission will be mounted to ensure integrated water resource management helping to conserve water, minimise wastage and ensure more equitable distribution. The target is to increase water use efficiency by 20 %. It will seek to ensure that a considerable part of urban water needs is met through recycling, and that water requirements of coastal cities with inadequate alternate sources are met through adption of technologies such as low temperature desalination.

In coastal areas, desalination can be done. But, desalination is an energy intensive process. To separate 1000 litres of water, energy of about 3 kW⋅h to 16 kW⋅h is required, depending on the process used. So, desalination has been recognized as an important cross disciplinary technology area for R&D in the 11th Plan.

One other focus area is the conservation of wetlands.

National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem

The Himalayan ecosystem is vital to the ecological security of the Indian landmass, through providing forest cover, feeding perennial rivers, conserving biodiversity, high valus agriculture base, and spectacular base for sustainable tourism. The purpose of this mission will be to evolve management measures for sustaining and safeguarding the Himalayan glacier and mountain eco-system.

Nationa Mission for a Green India

The Mission on Green India will be will be taken up on degraded forest land to enhance eco-system services including carbon sinks. Forests help in preservation of ecological balance and maintenance of biodiversity and are one of the most effective heat sinks.The national target of area under forest and tree cover is to increase from present 23 % to 33 %.

National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture

This mission will focus on four areas crucial to agriculture in adapting to climate change, namely dry land agriculture, risk management, access to information, and use of biotechnology. This would devise strategies to make Indian agriculture more resilient to climate change. New varieties of crops capable of withstanding extremes of weather will be developed and agriculture to be progressively adapted to projected climate change. Focus will be on improving productivity of rainfed agriculture.

National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change

This mission will be set up to identify challenges of, and responses to, climate change. The broad themes are climate modelling and promoting access to data. The data related to climate research are with different ministries. Some important databases are database on oceans, cryosphere, meteorology, land surface, hrdrological, agricultural, socio-economic, forests, and human related data.

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