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 earlier this week.
“India’s Five Year Plan includes 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 percent by 2016-17,” according to the survey that was tabled in Parliament.
According to the Planning Commission’s estimates, emission intensity declined by 17.6 percent between 1990 and 2005, and a further 20-25 percent 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 provision of financial and technological resources, including domestic and international support, for achieving low-carbon sustainable development,” the Survey noted.
However, despite various possible measure, 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 1-1.2 tonnes presently,” the Survey reports.
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 percent of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) on adaptation to climate variability, with specific areas of concern in agriculture, water resources, forests, health and sanitation, coastal zone infrastructure and extreme events.
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