Overview of India

Global warming is the term that is affecting every country of the world and India is also facing the ill effects of global warming. India is a world’s fastest growing economy across the globe and it is situated in South Asia. India is the second most inhabited nation of the world and in terms of area, it ranked seven. India is considered to be a vulnerable nation because it involve the issues like poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and lack of administration arrangement while dealing with the complicated issues (Meenu, Rehana and Mujumdar, 2013). It is been analysed that Climate change is the universal issue and to address the issues the government of India has developed an Advisory Council. In June 2008, for Climate change the Advisory Council has developed eight National Action plans. The action plan is comprised of main eight National Missions among them five are developed for addressing the issues of climate change these are National Mission for Green India, National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture, National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for climate change, National Solar Mission and National Water Missions

This report is developed to evaluate the key areas of vulnerabilities in India and to find out the action plans and policies developed by the administration to solve these problem relating to Climate change. This report covers the three main heading, first heading is methods in which the criteria and the brief overview of the company has been discussed, the second heading is comparison in this heading out of eight National Missions five which are suitable for the report are discussed and the third heading is discussion in which contains the information which are mention in the comparison section.   

Criteria being used for Evaluation 

In previous, the government of India has adopted an autonomous adaptation strategy. Autonomous adaptation strategy is nothing but a response to adjustment take place in human system and nature. To report the impact of climate change and to control and prevent the environment risk the government has developed various programs and those programs are public funded. The main objective of the programs or action plans of government are developed to reduce vulnerability of climate risk. In India, the action plans of the government provide its focus on main three areas these are targeting, mitigating and adapting climate change (Asseng, et.al. 2013). The main priority of the Government of India is energy access. Providing energy to 400 million people is a challenge for them. In modern world, electricity has become a very important part of living. For the government it becomes important to make off-grid solutions such as availing sustainable clean energy sources and solar energy (Field, 2014). The administration of India has implemented the domestic plan of climate change. In the country, numerous of its states are mounting state-level action plans that comprise components relating to climate change alteration. Manmohan Singh the former Prime Minister of India provide his emphasis on the issue of carbon extraction and put that in the priority (Field, 2014). To evaluate the criteria of adaptation strategies section 11-35 need to consider that are mentioned in the Cancun Adaptation Framework. Among section, 11-35 specifically section 12, 14, 15, 20, 32 and 34 were used to evaluate the plan. In 2008, the Government of Indian has decided to develop the action plan that is going to help the country in ensuring the sustainable development  

National Action Plans for Climate Change in India

Overview of Indian

Indian is an Asian country that is situated in the southern part of Asia the country shares its land boundaries with Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and China. The Arabian Sea to the west, the Indian oceans to the south and Bay of Bengal to east surround the country. In Northern, part the country is having Himalayan Mountain range. The country is a second most populated nation and area wise seventh biggest country in the world (Souza, 2018). It is expected that in the next 25 years Indian will be the most populous country. The land area of India spread over 3,287,263 sq. Km, the four geographical regions of the country are Desert in the west, Mountains in north, southern peninsula and plain region in the east.  In present, the estimated population of the country is 1.21 billion, among them 29% of the population is living in urban areas. India is comprised of 29 state and seven union territories (Souza, 2018). New Delhi is a capital of India. Hindi is a national or official language of the country however, English also is widely spoken language in the cities. Across India, 21 regional languages are used for communication in particular areas. Among the population of country 80.5% residents are Hindus, 1.9% are Sikhs, 2.3% are Christian, 13.4% are Muslim and 1.8% includes other religions such as Jains, Parsis and Buddhists (Souza, 2018).  The country literacy rate is 61% and the life expectancy rate is 67.14 years. The rupee is the official currency of the country. India ranked 11 in term of GDP. The economy of India is an open economy.  The Major trade partners of the country are Japan, Russia, European Union, United Arab Emirates, USA and China. In India, natural resources like Crude oil, diamonds, titanium ore, thorium, barite, limestone, chromite, bauxite, manganese, mica, coal, iron ore were found (Chu, 2016). The rising temperature, extreme weather changes, disturbed rainfall pattern, melting Himalayan glaciers and rising sea level are providing an adverse impact on the forests, health, agriculture, water resource and coastal areas. On climate change, India is spending around $10 billion, every year that is expected to increase by 2022 (Souza, 2018).  

Comparison 

With National Mission for Climate Change India has announced the Nationwide Action plan. The Central Government of the country has requested their certified bodies to develop the detailed plan for attaining the goals. The Government has developed eight National policies or missions that can help them in attaining their goals the five National Plan or Missions are discussed below

National Water Mission

National Water Mission

The NAPCC has described the National Water Mission as ‘National Water mission is developed to make sure the minimization of water waste, to integrate water resources supervision to preserve water and to make sure more reasonable dissemination of water across and inside states (Adger, et.al. 2013). The five major goals of the Mission are first increasing use of water efficiently by 20%, next is the elevation of state and citizen act for water preservation, conservation and augmentation, another is the advancement of basin level assimilated water possessions management, fourth is focused attention on vulnerable areas and fifth is a wide-ranging water record in communal assessment and domain.  For the finance of the Mission, the government provide funds to the department. It is been assessed that most of the Funds are provided by the Ministry for the implementation of the program.  

National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Eco-System

The National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Eco-System (NMSHE) is a cross-cutting, multi-pronged mission and it involvement in the ecological development of the nation. NMSHE improves the thoughtfulness about the climate changes, and adaptation actions required for the Himalayas. The primary and most crucial objective of the NMSHE is it helps in developing the defensible capability nationwide to evaluate the health status of the Himalayan ecosystem, with the implementation of action plan it will assist states of India which are lies in the Himalayan region and empower policy-making bodies in strategy origination (Dubash, 2013). The objective of the mission is further divided into a few specific activities for the sustainable development of the Himalayan Eco-System.

National Mission for a Green India

The aim behind the development of the National Mission for a Green India is that the authorities want to enhance, restored and protect the diminishing forest and to respond to the climate change. The Mission provides its focus on the multiple ecosystem services such as water, biodiversity, wetlands, critical habitats, biomass, preserving mangroves etc. along with co-benefits of carbon sequestration. The National Mission for a Green India has approved a unified cross-sectoral approach because it implements on both private as well as public lands (Chandel, Shrivastva, Sharma and Ramasamy, 2016). The main goals of the mission are they want to increase the area of forests up to 5 million hectares to advance the feature of forest and the forest lands, the second goal of the mission is to improve the ecosystem services such as non-timber forest produces, timber and carbon sequestration and storage, and last to increase the income of 3 million households through forest-based livelihood.

National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Eco-System

National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change

Government has developed the National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change to shape a vibrant and energetic Knowledge structure in India. The knowledge structure will support and inform the national policy and action plan to respond effectively to the climate changes. The main objectives of National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change are partnership through worldwide collaboration, building alliances, complementing the efforts made by other Missions, development of the national capacity for modelling the regional impact of climate change and formulation of the network (Sahoo, 2016).

National Solar Mission

The government in June 2008 with the motive of identifying the technology development solar energy in the nation launched the countrywide solar mission. On January 2011, the Government of India has provided its approval for the mission. It is recommended to the Solar mission that they implement the plan in three stages that will lead up to the installed capacity of 20000 MW by 2022 (Moors, et.al. 2013). Other than ecological and energy security the solar mission has the lead of devolved dissemination of energy. India is the tropical country where the sun and its rays are easily available it will make the working of the mission more easily. The purpose of the project is to provide its emphasis on enabling surroundings for solar technology diffusion in both decentralised and centralised level.

The Government of India has developed eight plans or action plans to solve the problems relating to the climate change. The action plan is formed because the country is one of the most vulnerable countries and as its result the country is facing challenges like Climate changes. Due to climate changes, the country is facing various issues and to control and prevent the country from the ill effect of the environment variation the administration of India has developed a major eight Missions. The development of the mission is the good step taken by the country. However, the plan did not provide any justification regarding why only these eight missions are developed (Quitzow, 2015). The missions of government did not provide any evidence stating that they are using structured thinking in the plan and eco-system based approach. In the recent few years, India has experienced frequent floods and droughts in various part and because of these natural disaster millions of people get affected. The national Mission of the government did not involve the preparedness for these kinds of natural disasters and because of that human lives get affected.  The plans just focus on the preserving the environment none of the plans is based on or provides its focus on the security and safety of the resident of the country. If the country experienced any kind of natural disasters, none of the mission can provide their assistance in the safety of the human the only thing these plans can do is they can distribute compensation to the people who got affected by the disaster (Gupta, et.al. 2015).

National Mission for a Green India

In present, the approach of the environment variation is seen in the NAPCC that is too broad and less specificities. However, the energy efficiency solar and forestry mission that include mitigation components in the form of the mission on sustainable agriculture, quantified targets and water and sustainable Himalayan are purely adaptive (Reddy, Sreelekshmi, Jha and Dadhwal, 2013). The missions dealing with the Subjects such as forestry, agriculture, water, sustainable habitat are multi-departmental, overlapping and multi-sectoral in nature and for these factors the government has developed the eight missions. It is important for the government to bring time-to-time changes in the policies and try to cover every aspect of the society with nature.

Conclusion 

The eight mission or action plans are the effective and systematic step of the Indian Government to solve the problems like global warming. The Action plans of the government include the associated budget, concrete action points and its specific target. The government develops the action plans when they found out that for sustainable development and reduction in climate risk is very important for the country and the people of the country. On the document, the action plan of the country looks very effective but when it comes at implementation, the plan is not satisfactory. The plan of the government has failed to address the issues related to the vulnerable population. It is recommended that the government should bring some changes to the plans and them more effective and sustainable.

References

Adger, W.N., Barnett, J., Brown, K., Marshall, N. and O’brien, K., (2013) Cultural dimensions of climate change impacts and adaptation. Nature Climate Change, 3(2), p.112.

Asseng, S., Ewert, F., Rosenzweig, C., Jones, J.W., Hatfield, J.L., Ruane, A.C., Boote, K.J., Thorburn, P.J., Rötter, R.P., Cammarano, D. and Brisson, N., (2013) Uncertainty in simulating wheat yields under climate change. Nature Climate Change, 3(9), p.827.

Chandel, S.S., Shrivastva, R., Sharma, V. and Ramasamy, P., (2016) Overview of the initiatives in renewable energy sector under the national action plan on climate change in India. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 54, pp.866-873.

Chu, E., (2016) The political economy of urban climate adaptation and development planning in Surat, India. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 34(2), pp.281-298.

Dubash, N.K., (2013) The politics of climate change in India: narratives of equity and cobenefits. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 4(3), pp.191-201.

Field, C.B. (2014) Climate change 2014–Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability: Regional aspects. Cambridge University Press.

Gupta, N., Rajvanshi, A., Sathyakumar, S., Johnson, J.A., Sivakumar, K., Rawat, G.S. and Mathur, V.B., (2015) Need for targeted education programme for preparedness and formulating adaptive strategies in the Indian Himalayan region. Current Science, 109(7), pp.1233-1234.

Meenu, R., Rehana, S. and Mujumdar, P.P., (2013) Assessment of hydrologic impacts of climate change in Tunga–Bhadra river basin, India with HEC?HMS and SDSM. Hydrological Processes, 27(11), pp.1572-1589.

Moors, E., Singh, T., Siderius, C., Balakrishnan, S. and Mishra, A., (2013) Climate change and waterborne diarrhoea in northern India: Impacts and adaptation strategies. Science of the Total Environment, 468, pp.S139-S151.

Quitzow, R., (2015) Assessing policy strategies for the promotion of environmental technologies: A review of India’s National Solar Mission. Research Policy, 44(1), pp.233-243.

Reddy, C.S., Sreelekshmi, S., Jha, C.S. and Dadhwal, V.K., (2013) National assessment of forest fragmentation in India: Landscape indices as measures of the effects of fragmentation and forest cover change. Ecological Engineering, 60, pp.453-464.

Sahoo, S.K., (2016) Renewable and sustainable energy reviews solar photovoltaic energy progress in India: A review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 59, pp.927-939.

Souza, D., (2018) India Overview. [Online] Available on: https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/ID/India-Overview [Accessed on 4-10-2018].