Ahead of the crucial UN climate change conference in Paris, India today said it will present a "comprehensive" plan to combat climate change unlike most other countries whose 'Intended Nationally Determined Contributions' (INDCs) reflect only mitigation measures.
Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said India is in the "advanced" stage of submitting its INDCs and it will have two separate templates which will reflect both adaptation and mitigation apart from technology and capacity building.
"We are at an advance stage of preparing our INDC. For the last eight months, we have been engaged in this exercise and widest consultations have taken place with all ministries, state governments, research institutes, industry, think tanks and many organisations.
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"Our INDCs will be comprehensive. Many countries who have submitted their INDCs talk only about mitigation. But the world has now accepted that mitigation and adaptation both carry same importance.
"We have created two templates for it. All elements will be part of our INDCs - mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology and capacity building," Javadekar told reporters.
He added that this was the mandate of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and India's INDC will reflect this mandate. "We are submitting it in due course. We will declare it appropriately," he said.
All countries are either in the process or have submitted their INDCs in the run up to the Paris climate change conference, which will pave the way for a global climate pact.
More than 50 countries, including China, the US, and the European Union -- the world's three largest emitters -- have already released their INDCs. All countries are expected to submit them by September 30.
The minister said that at India's insistence, France has started the initiative of having informal meetings before the Paris summit.
"We, right from day one, said that there are issues and differences of opinion on differentiation, ambition, finance, technology and legal nature of agreement which we must discuss at various forums point by point...We consistently demanded and many countries supported it," he said.
