58 pc rise in carbon emissions

In a span of 16 years, India’s climate change causing green house gas emissions have increased by 58 per cent and the biggest contributor has been coal fired power sector, a government report released on Tuesday said.

Updated on: May 11, 2010, 23:28:19 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a span of 16 years, India’s climate change causing green house gas emissions have increased by 58 per cent and the biggest contributor has been coal fired power sector, a government report released on Tuesday said.

The footprint of India’s growth story was visible with emissions increasing to 1.7 billion tonnes in 2007 from 1.2 billion tonnes in 1994, confirming India being among the world’s five biggest carbon polluters.

China is the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases blamed for heating up the planet. The United States is second.

The amount of carbon emissions India added to the atmosphere between 1994 and 2007 was equal to what Australia emits every year. That meant that India’s per capita emission remained 10 times less than Australia that was 1.5 tonnes per person.

“India is still not using its emission space,” Planning Commission Deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia said. “Cut off is two tonnes per capita and we a still below that.”

Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh said the study would be used in the global climate negotiations to propagate India’s stand of global treaty based on per capita.

Thank half of rural India without electricity for low per capita as the study ‘Green House Gas Emissions 2007’ suggested that the emissions transport sector (mostly in urban areas) and growing electricity demand (in urban area) has increased the most.

The power sector accounted for 719.30 million tonnes of emissions against 355.03 million tonnes in 1994, while the transport sector’s share jumped to 142.04 million tonnes from 80.28 million tonnes during the same period.

Even though India’s agriculture production has increased, the study, described by the Ramesh as “most updated in the world”, said its share in total emissions dipped by around 10 per cent.

Of the total emissions in 2007, 74 per cent was carbon dioxide, 22 per cent was methane, which caused climate change 21 times more than and remaining was nitrogen dioxide.

While unveiling the report, Ramesh said India would launch a satellite to monitor carbon emissions by 2013.

“We have already spoken to Indian Space Research Organisation in this regard,” he said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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