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Sustainable Development and Climate Change 225

CHAPTER AT A GLANCE

 Sustainable development remains core to India’s development strategy, despite several
challenges emerging on account of the unprecedented crisis due to COVID-19 pandemic.

 The pandemic has challenged the health infrastructure, adversely impacted livelihoods
and exacerbated the inequality in the food and nutritional availability in the country.
This has reemphasized the criticality of having institutions and mechanisms that can
facilitate the country to absorb exogenous shocks well.

 India has been taking several proactive climate actions to fulfil its obligations as per the
principles of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and
equity. The first priority for India is adaptation as the country is highly vulnerable to
extreme weather events.

 The NDC submitted by the country has been formulated keeping in mind the
developmental imperatives of the country and is on a “best effort basis”. In its NDC,
India has sought to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 33 to 35 per cent below
2005 levels by the year 2030; achieve 40 per cent of cumulative electric power installed
capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030; and enhance forest and tree cover to create
additional carbon sink equivalent to 2.5 to 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2030.

 The country is on its track to successfully decoupling its economic growth from GHG
emissions. As per the second BUR submitted in 2018, India’s emission intensity of
GDP reduced by 21 per cent in 2014 over the level of 2005.

 The country is relying on domestic resources to implement adaptation and mitigation
action on mission mode. The financing considerations will remain critical especially as
the country steps up the targets substantially.

 The implementation of NDC has started from 1 January 2021. There is a huge gap
st
between resource availability and the requirements, implementation of wide-ranging
NDC goals presents a major challenge

 COP 26 now scheduled in 2021 is expected to discuss and arrive at a consensus on
transparency mechanism; Article 6 (market and non-market mechanisms); common
time frames for nationally determined contributions; long-term climate finance etc.
On finance matters, it is essential to arrive at a consensus on the definition of climate
finance and on a common accounting methodology for assessment and evaluation of
climate finance.

 In 2017, to give push to green bonds issuances in India, SEBI issued guidelines on
green bonds including their listing of green bonds on the Indian stock exchanges. The
cumulative issuance of global green bonds crossed US$ 1 trillion mark in 2020.