A proposal to have a 'climate change' budget subhead, on the lines of a gender budget, incorporated in the national accounts and the annual Budget documents of the Union government was floated at a meeting of the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change. The meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was held on Monday.
It was the first meeting of the council after it was reconstituted under the National Democratic Alliance government. The meeting also discussed a proposal from the agricultural ministry to look for opportunities to reduce emissions from the agricultural sector. This proposal, if accepted, would take India away from its current and long-standing view that the farmers and the poor should not be burdened by permitting expensive greenhouse gas emission reduction steps in the agricultural sector. India has so far fought hard at the international forums to protect the agricultural sector from any emission reduction steps even in mid-term future.
The proposal though, sources said, did not suggest an alteration of the international position at the moment and only asked that three steps be taken at the moment in the domestic arena and more opportunities for emission reduction and adaptation to be assessed for future.
The proposal for each ministry separately and distinctly reflecting its budget for climate change actions did not see a detailed discussion, three people present at the council meeting told Business Standard. It did lay out that each ministry should review its work to separately reflect actions that would add to either adaptation or mitigation actions under the climate change framework.
The council also undertook a review of the existing national actions plans on climate change and agreed to launch three new initiatives as well as new missions besides the existing eight. A critical review of the exiting missions also highlighted that the country was lagging behind on some of these, such as the green India mission for afforestation. The lack of finances to support the missions as well as the state-level action plans were brought to attention. A review of the plans had already been conducted by the executive committee of the council, which is headed by the principle secretary to the prime minister. The environment secretary made a presentation on the status of these missions.
The prime minister suggested setting up a consortium of countries on solar energy, which could collaborate on to produce new technologies in the sector. He also suggested that the green India mission focus on agro-forestry with regulations encouraging farmers to sow and harvest trees in their fields and earn from the process. While a proposal for a separate Wind mission, along the lines of the existing Solar mission was also made, the prime minister suggested combining the two, several people at the meeting told Business Standard. Multiple sources at the meeting said that the PM made around a dozen specific interventions during the meeting on various issues pertaining to climate change.
This included a detailed inquiry by him in to the existing energy efficiency mission and the new initiative to expand it substantially. New sectors such as railways, heavy vehicles and additional industrial units in each of the sector are to be added rapidly over years to expand the mission to cover almost 50 per cent of the total commercial energy use in the country.
A proposal to start a national water efficiency mission to reduce the water use intensity in commercial domestic and industry sector was also approved at the meeting. Besides this, the health ministry proposed to start a mission to study the impacts of climate change on health and the environment ministry to expand its existing work on coastal management and emergency response plan to all the coastal states.
The council, in a departure from its work under the UPA government, also discussed the outcomes of the recently concluded Lima round of UN climate talks and its implications for the crucial Paris agreement to be signed by the end of this year. Previously, the council was restricted to reviewing domestic policy on climate change. A majority of the council members, including concerned ministers expressed concerns about getting locked in to an ex-ante review of India's domestically determined targets under the Paris agreement. They also discussed the shape and contours of these targets that India plans to provide by June to the UN climate convention, which would be incorporated in the Paris agreement by the year-end.
These targets, or Intended Nationally Determined Contributions as they are referred to, are currently under preparation based on inter-ministerial discussions.
