India to launch climate change action plan in June

The wave of green legislation and government initiatives sweeping the globe is expected to reach India this summer after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday announced that he would publish the country's first detailed national plan for tackling climate change this June.

Speaking at the annual Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, Singh said that the action plan will focus on maintaining economic growth while improving energy efficiency, mitigating the effect of climate change on India's poor and increasing investment in green technologies, potentially through a government-backed venture capital fund.

However, he insisted that the plan would not include emission reduction targets beyond a commitment that India's "per-capita carbon emissions will never exceed the average per-capita emissions of developed industrial economies".

According to UN data, India's per-capita carbon emissions were 1.2 tonnes in 2004, compared with 20.6 tonnes for the US in the same year. However, India and China are coming under increasing pressure to accept some form of binding emission targets as part of any successor to the UN's Kyoto agreement, with the US insisting its involvement is dependent upon all other large polluters, including India and China, signing up to targets.

India's new action plan follows a similar initiative from the Chinese government, which last year unveiled its first climate change strategy plan featuring commitments to bolster investment in clean technology, introduce green taxes and crackdown on polluters.

Singh also called from greater support from developed economies, arguing it was in all countries' interests to accelerate the transfer of green technologies to the developing world. "The world will have to...in the next two years create a consensus for cooperation that involves finance and technology support to countries for adaptation," he said.

His comments come as officials from Japan, US, and the UK prepare to table a proposal for a major new global technology transfer fund at the meeting of G7 finance ministers in Tokyo this weekend.