Greenhouse gas emissions from India: A perspective

Climate change arising due to the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the pre-industrial times has emerged as a serious global environmental issue and poses a threat and challenge to mankind. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change enjoins upon the Parties to the Convention to protect the climate system according to their common but differentiated responsibilities.

The parties to the convention are also required to report to the convention on a regular basis a comprehensive and comparable inventory of anthropogenic greenhouse gases and the steps taken to protect the climate. Towards the fulfillment of its obligations, India submitted its initial national communication to the UNFCCC in June 2004.

This paper analyses the improvements made in greenhouse gases (GHG) inventory estimation reported in the Initial National Communication with respect to the earlier published estimates and highlights the strengths, the gaps that still exist and the future challenges for inventory refinement. An assessment of the current and projected trends of GHG emission from India and some selected countries indicates that though Indian emissions grew at the rate of 4 per cent per annum during 1990 and 2000 period and are projected to grow further to meet the national developmental needs, the absolute level of GHG emissions in 2020 will be below 5 per cent of global emissions and the per capita emissions will still be low compared to most of the developed countries as well as the global average.