New Delhi: India is already meeting and exceeding key climate targets and has a real opportunity to grow even faster using clean energy and industry, UN climate chief Simon Stiell has said.In an email interview with PTI, Stiell said India’s vast geography and large population mean a significant number of people are vulnerable to climate impacts. Therefore, he said, it is crucial to invest in making people, communities, infrastructure, and businesses more resilient.”India is already meeting and exceeding key targets. For example, by installing 100 GW (gigawatts) of solar in record time or providing electricity in every village.”I see a real opportunity for India to grow even faster, using clean energy and industry, which will be a huge benefit to India’s economic prosperity, with millions more jobs, better health outcomes, more affordable and secure energy accessible to all, and faster-rising living standards for the Indian people,” the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said.He noted that from melting glaciers in the north to stronger storms, cyclones, and food insecurity, India’s geography and population make a large number of people vulnerable to climate impacts.”And the need to invest in ensuring people, communities, infrastructure, and businesses are resilient is clear. But that population and geographic diversity is also what makes India so strong. This is a growing population being educated with the skills needed to prosper in the clean and climate-resilient industries of this and future decades,” he told PTI.Stiell, who visited India last week, called the country a “solar superpower” and urged it to develop an ambitious climate plan covering its entire economy. He said that fully embracing the global clean energy boom would accelerate India’s economic rise.He praised India’s efforts to tackle climate change, saying that while some governments only talk, “India delivers”.As part of its climate commitments or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted to the UNFCCC in 2022, India aims to reduce its GDP emission intensity by 45 per cent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. It also aims to achieve 50 per cent of its installed electric power capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030.India has also pledged to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.According to government data, India’s GDP emission intensity fell by 36 per cent between 2005 and 2020.As of December 2024, the share of non-fossil fuel power generation capacity in the country has already exceeded 47 per cent, and an additional carbon sink of 2.29 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent was created between 2005 and 2021.Countries are required to submit their next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), or climate plans, for the 2031-2035 period this year.With most countries, including India, missing the February 10 deadline, Stiell earlier this month urged them to submit their plans by September at the latest.An official source in the Union environment ministry told PTI that India has not yet finalised its new NDCs.India’s new NDCs will have targets achievable with the means available. Mitigating climate change requires financial and technological support, along with other enablers. Developed countries are unwilling to provide this support. Why should countries that did not cause climate change continue to suffer? the source said.The collective aim of these climate plans is to limit global temperature rise since the start of the industrial revolution to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the key goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement.Developed countries, historically responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change, were required to deliver a new and ambitious financial package to support climate action in the developing world at the UN climate conference in Azerbaijan last year.However, they offered a paltry USD 300 billion by 2035, a mere fraction of at least USD 1.3 trillion needed annually from 2025.India had called the sum “too little, too distant”, “paltry” and “an optical illusion”.The government’s Economic Survey 2024-25 tabled in Parliament in January said the lack of funding from developed countries to mitigate climate change in the Global South may prompt developing countries to “rework” their climate targets.Asked if it was time countries looked at solutions to environmental crises without the United States, Stiell told PTI: “It’s not factually correct to say that the US as a whole is turning its back on climate action.”Cities and states, including some with economies bigger than many G20 economies remain fully on board, as do businesses and investors, he said.Stiell said the USD 2 trillion clean energy boom is too big an opportunity to miss, and stepping back only means more opportunities, growth, jobs, profit, and wealth flow to competitor economies.
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