Citizen Groups Respond to India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change

Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh at the National Action Plan on Climate Change Release Function

Barely a week after the release of the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), citizen groups and civil society members from across India began putting forward their viewpoints on the Action Plan. Shortly after the release, the Climate Challenge India (CCI) coalition, a grouping of environmental experts, financiers, businesspeople, analysts and activists committed to developing a positive leadership agenda on climate change for India, issued an independent Interim Assessment of the Government of India’s ‘National Action Plan on Climate Change’. The assessment gives the Government a B+ for effort and a D for vision. NAPCC was released on the 30th of June 2008 by the Prime Minister of India, in a high profile function in New Delhi.

While welcoming the fact that a national action plan has been tabled for discussion, the group concluded that an opportunity to demonstrate leadership on a critical issue for the country has been missed. Although the Plan talks of promoting a more coherent approach to sustainable development across government departments, it does not demonstrate the adoption of a new, more forward-looking agenda based on ensuring climate security for the nation, or a well-thought through strategy chalking out a discernible low-carbon pathway for India. There is also an absence of any sense of palpable urgency about climate change, or the establishment of clear targets and timetables for action that would have reflected a more serious level of commitment by the government.

Indeed, many vestiges of the Governments old approach to climate policy and mindset are exhibited in the Action Plan. For example, in the very first paragraph of the report, the Government takes a dig at developed countries for having caused the climate change problems in the first place. More welcome is the recognition that climate change is a serious inter-generational challenge and that particular attention needs to be paid in adaptation strategies to gender and vulnerable groups such as women, children and the elderly. But the absence of any attention to the need for climate-resilient planning for India’s metropolises or Tier II cities in the Action Plan, shows an utter lack of understanding about the challenge to human habitats posed by climate change.

This is not to suggest that the report is entirely without merit. There are a number of welcome measures in the report. The focus on the further enhancement of eight mission areas many of them already the subject of national plans is appreciable. Realizing that if key aspects of the report are to be implemented and improved upon, they will require the engagement of India’s many diverse and enterprising communities, CCI has requested the Government to establish mechanisms to promote such engagement, and has also committed itself to a democratization of debate on climate policy and its effective implementation in India.

Click here to read the 52 page long NAPCC |  Click here to read the 7 page Interim Assessment of NAPCC

Also posted on EcoWorldly
Image Source: PMO’s Press Release