CLIMATE CHANGE KNOWLEDGE PORTAL
WHY IN NEWS?
- Recently, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has launched the ‘India Climate Change Knowledge Portal’.
- Objective: The Portal will help in disseminating knowledge among citizens about all the major steps the Government is taking at both national and international levels to address climate change issues.
- Benefit: It will be a single point Information resource which provides information on the different climate initiatives taken by various Line Ministries enabling users to access updated status on these initiatives.
COMPONENTS:
The eight major components included in the knowledge portal are:
- India’s Climate Profile
o The northern part of the country is characterized as a continental climate with hot summers and cold winters. The coastal regions of the country, however, experience warmer temperatures with little variation throughout the year and frequent rainfall.
- National Policy Framework
o For Example In order to strengthen the implementation of environmentally sound management of hazardous waste in the country, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has amended the Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management & Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2016.
- India’s Nationally determined contributions (NDC) Goals
o NDC’s are at the heart of the Paris Agreement and the achievement of these long-term goals.
o NDC’s embody efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
- Adaptation Actions
o To meet the high energy demand India is adapting to clean energy development. Example: Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission which aims to increase the share of solar energy in India.
- Mitigation Actions
o For example, to mitigate water issues Indian government launched the National Water Mission.
- Bilateral and Multilateral Cooperation
o The Paris climate deal is a great example of multilateral cooperation.
- International Climate Negotiations
- In the Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris in 2015, India accepted 1.5 degrees Celsius as a target limit for the increase in the global average temperature and announced an ambitious domestic renewable energy programme.
- Reports & Publications
o For example, reports like Assessment of Climate Change over the Indian Region published by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).
Other Initiatives to Fight Climate Change:
- National Clean Air Programme (NCAP): It is a five-year action plan with a tentative target of 20-30% reduction in concentrations of PM10 and PM2.5 by 2024, with 2017 as the base year.
- India has also shifted from Bharat Stage-IV (BS-IV) to Bharat Stage-VI (BS-VI) emission norms from 1st April 2020 which was earlier to be adopted by 2024.
- It has distributed more than 360 million LED bulbs under the UJALA scheme, which has led to energy saving of about 47 billion units of electricity per year and reduction of 38 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
- International Solar Alliance: It is an Indian initiative conceived as a coalition of solar-resource-rich countries (which lie either completely or partly between the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn) to address their special energy needs.
- The National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) was launched in 2008 which aims at creating awareness among the representatives of the public, different agencies of the government, scientists, industry and the communities on the threat posed by climate change and the steps to counter it.