India is one of the world’s top polluter countries that contributers around 4 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The government of India is all set to develop a national plan to tackle the effects of global warming in the country.

For this, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held the first meeting of the new Council on Climate to draw the new national agenda against global warming. In this meeting of the 21-member council many personalities from different fields were present including ministers, environmentalists, industrialists and journalists.

Despite of enormous international pressure, no emission targets were discussed in the meeting. The agenda of the meeting was to discuss the plan to focus on ways to develop energy efficiency without harming the economic growth in the country.

It was decided in the meeting to have a comprehensive negotiating strategy before the scheduled United Nations climate change meeting in December.

The Prime Minister showed its greater concern over the melting glaciers in Himalayas and said that the Country’s food security comes from states such as Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Rivers in these states are fed by glacier melting in the Himalayas.

Himalayas is import for the economic prosperity, peace, social harmony and environmental sustainability of the region. He said that there is a need to identify better knowledge institutions in the country that the people could mandate for an agenda related to the Himalayas.

Some other members said that there is a need to assess flows on a month-to-month basis to know the impact on rivers over a period of time. At the same time, the PM also said that this is very much satisfactory that India was at the forefront of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). India is also the largest player with the maximum number of projects registered in the country.

Now, the members would send their critical inputs, expressed satisfaction at the impetus coming from the Government’s highest quarters to the PMO and the further strategy would be decided probably in the next meeting.

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