By IANS
New Delhi : Taking the first step towards developing a national plan to tackle the effects of global warming and cut back greenhouse gas emissions, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday said the government would convert six million hectares of degraded forest land into green areas.
A major afforestation programme called ‘Green India’, which will kick off on Independence Day, was announced by Manmohan Singh at the first meeting of the National Council on Climate Change set up last month.
With reports that receding Himalayan glaciers could jeopardise water supplies for millions of people in the country, he also called for a long-term strategy to deal with glacial melting.
“Our food security comes largely from irrigated areas of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh whose rivers are fed by glacier melting in the Himalayas. There is a gap in our understanding of the Himalayas and we need to build a knowledge-based partnership of affected countries to manage and develop the region,” said Manmohan Singh.
“As a concrete first step, we must identify knowledge institutions within the country that we can mandate for an agenda related to the Himalayas as well as identify other knowledge institutions with whom we could collaborate in knowledge-sharing.”
The meeting decided that a national strategy paper on climate change would be prepared before the end of the year.
R.K. Pachauri, chairperson of TERI and a member of the council, has said that India was completely unprepared for the effects of climate change that could lead to widespread flooding and drought.
“On a scale of 0 to 10, India’s preparedness is 0.5,” Pachauri had warned at the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in April.
In his opening remarks, Manmohan Singh said India was in the forefront of development of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the largest global player in terms of the number of projects.
“The Indian National CDM Authority has accorded host country approval to over 667 projects facilitating an investment of nearly Rs.600 billion in sectors such as energy efficiency, fuel, industrial processes, municipal solid waste and renewable energy,” the prime minister said.
Participants at the meeting emphasized the need for funding research on impact of climate change including research on management of impact of droughts and floods on crop production and urban planning.
Some of the other issues discussed were encouraging public transportation in urban areas and reducing dependence on fuel inefficient technologies.
The setting up of the panel is thought to be a response to consistent demands that both India and China – likely to be the world’s largest polluters in the future – commit to major cuts in carbon emissions.
Global warming was on top of the agenda at the G-8 meeting at the German spa town of Heiliegendamm held last month.
However, India and other developing nations contend that the developed world must subsidise clean technologies in order to allow them to make the switch to less-polluting energy sources without compromising on economic growth.
The panel set up by Manmohan Singh includes External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Minister for Environment and Forests S. Reghupathy, deputy chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia and senior government advisors on science and technology.
On the non-governmental side, Sunita Narain of CSE and Ratan Tata, chairman investment commission, have been included in the group, besides Pachauri.