The rich countries blame India and other developing nations for the world's rising emission levels. Here is proof that the boot is on the other foot. Fresh data released by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change says greenhouse gas emissions from the rich nations increased by 12.8% between 1990-2007, the latest period for which figures are available. While the industrialized countries are now gunning for India and China to...

There is a real fear that the Kyoto Protocol will be killed soon Two years ago, amidst much fanfare, a United Nations ministerial meeting in the fabled island of Bali adopted a “roadmap” for tackling climate change. The roadmap laid down two tracks for progress, corresponding to the two international agreements on climate change — the Kyoto Protocol and the Framework Convention on Climate Change. With regard to the first...

THE ongoing negotiations with the World Bank provide an opportunity to urban policymakers to reinvent the present form of JNNURM (called v1.0). Thus far JNNURM v1.0 has focused on upgrading macro-level dimensions of city’s environment, ignoring the social and economic diversity (e.g., mixed uses and building types) prevailing in urban areas. The top-down urban ‘renewal’ model underlying the present version of JNNURM is largely founded on the planning practices of...

Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has brought out an excellent compilation titled Climate Change, Politics and Facts. The government is planning legislation with targets for greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps to bolster this, the Ministry of Environment and Forests has published results of five studies - NCAER/Jadavpur, TERI/MoEF, IRADE, TERI/Poznan and McKinsey - and findings have been contrasted and collated by CSE. As per all these models except for TERI/Poznan,...

NEW DELHI — When the United Nations convened its summit meeting on climate change last month, China and the United States, the two most important countries at the negotiating table, hewed to mostly familiar scripts, making promises without making too many specific commitments. Less familiar was the script followed by the third most important country at the table, India. India’s public stance on climate change is usually predictable — predictably obstinate...