India’s Climate Policy Directed Towards Sustainable Development, Poverty Eradication: Bhupender Yadav

India’s climate policy is directed towards sustainable development and poverty eradication while striving continuously to decouple emissions from growth and achieve energy efficiency across sectors, said Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav on Sunday.

Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, he said, as we enter the third year of the UN Critical Decade of Action, with just seven years remaining to achieve the 17 sustainable development goals, under the visionary leadership of PM Modi drafting and ensure the execution of climate smart policies has taken centre stage in India.

He said, "Climate-smart policies are a very Indian way of life and the term sustainable development may be new. However, the concept is knitted into the Indian ethos."

Yadav said that Bharatiya (India) ethos has underlined— take from Nature no more than you need. Nature exists to satiate human needs, not greed. We are people who use less, we are people who reuse what we use.

He added that the circular economy is part of Indian culture.

The Minister said, "It is because Indians are pro-planet people that the nation, with more than 17 per cent of the global population, has contributed only about 4 per cent to the global cumulative greenhouse gas emissions between 1850 and 2019 against the 60 per cent contributed by developed nations

Even today, India’s per capita emissions are less than one third of world’s per capita GHG emissions.

Yadav said globally India stands fourth in terms of installed renewable energy capacity, foruth in terms of wind installed capacity, fifth in terms of solar installed capacity.

"In just the last 9 years, installed capacity of solar energy in India has increased by more than 23 times," he added.

He said he was proud to share that India’s installed renewable energy capacity has increased 396 per cent in the last 8.5 years.

The minister said these numbers are proof of the fact that the climate smart policy is the front and centre of India’s development paradigm.

He mentioned that India has emerged as a global example on how development and conservation of environment can go hand in hand.