India is world's third largest carbon emitter

India is now world's third biggest carbon dioxide emitting nation after China and the US.

Updated on: Oct 4, 2010, 23:15:03 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India is now world's third biggest carbon dioxide emitting nation after China and the US.

The new emission data from the United Nations is a probable cause of worry for India's climate negotiators at the next round of talks that started in Tianjin in China on Monday, where rich countries are expected to ask India and China to take legally binding emission cuts after 2012, when present global climate treaty expires.

China in 2009 moved to the top position while contributing 23 per cent of the total global emissions and India this year surpassed Russia to take the third position with five percent.

The saving grace is that the difference in total carbon emissions between the US (22 per cent) and India, is still huge. Russia's emissions have been fallen because of economic slowdown.

The data prompted Environment minister Jairam Ramesh to comment that the country cannot afford to strive for high economic growth and rise in carbon emissions.

"We will unilaterally, voluntarily, move on a low-carbon growth path. We can't have 8-9 percent GDP growth and high-carbon growth," news agencies quoted Ramesh saying at the sidelines of an environment meet in Kathmandu.

India's per-capita carbon emission is still lowest in the world (about 4.5 tonnes) but the demand for energy is rising, especially among the middle-class.

Ramesh, first to comment on India's position, said India's rush for wealth could not come at the expense of the environment. "Its to be low-carbon 8 percent, 9 percent growth and that is the objective that we have set for ourselves," he said.

But, the pressure on India and China to reduce emissions is rsing. Last month US chief climate negotiator Todd Stern told a meeting of major economies form that a legally binding climate treaty was not possible until India and China take "obligation" to reduce emissions.

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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