India spending over 2.6 per cent of GDP to tackle climate change

The Economic Times (India): India is spending over 2.6 per cent of it's GDP to deal with challenges of climate change and wants rich countries to honour their financial commitments to address green issues, according to a Finance Ministry paper.

Also, India is committed to spend large resources through its planning process on meeting the domestic mitigation goal of reducing the emissions intensity of its GDP by 20-25 per cent by 2020 in comparison with 2005 level, it said.

"Current Government expenditure in India on adaptation to climate variability exceeds 2.6 per cent of the GDP, with agriculture, water resources, health and sanitation, forests, coastal zone infrastructure and extreme events, being specific areas of concern," the paper said.

While India on its own has taken a number of steps, it said increased domestic momentum to deal with climate change also "critically depends on multilateral negotiations" taking place and actual disbursement of fast start and long term finance promised during the Cancun meeting.

"There should be a multilateral financial mechanism under the Convention (UNFCCC) that should be set up with resources provided by developed countries on the basis of assessed contributions," the paper added.  India said the funds that are currently available under the Convention and Kyoto Protocol are small compared to the magnitude assessed by many studies. ...

India's National Disaster Response Force cleaning up after a landslide in Darjeeling in 2009, shot by Kumarrakajee, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license