India To Sign Paris Agreement On Climate Change

The government of India lead by Shri Prakash Javadekar, minister of state of environment, forest and climate change, will sign the agreement on behalf of India at UN following the approval from Union Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Mr. Javadekar will sign the Agreement at the high level signature ceremony convened by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, on 22 April 2016. The Paris Agreement was adopted at the 21st Conference of Parties held in Paris in December 2015, which was attended PM Narendra Modi.

This Paris agreement is termed as key milestone on climate change in global arena on climate issues. Salient features of the Paris Agreement:

a) It acknowledges the development imperatives of developing countries and recognizes the developing countries' right to development and their efforts to harmonize development with environment, while protecting the interests of the most vulnerable.

b) The agreement also recognizes the importance of sustainable lifestyles and sustainable patterns of consumption with developed countries taking the lead, and notes the importance of 'climate justice’ in its preamble.

c) The Paris Agreement seeks to enhance the 'implementation of the Convention' whilst reflecting the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances.

d) The objective of the Agreement further ensures that it is not mitigation-centric and includes other important elements such as adaptation, loss and damage, finance, technology, capacity building and transparency of action and support.

e) Pre-2020 actions are also part of the decisions. The developed country parties are urged to scale up their level of financial support with a complete road map to achieve the goal of jointly providing US $ 100 billion by 2020 for mitigation and adaptation by significantly increasing adaptation finance from current levels and to further provide appropriate technology and capacity building support.

India had advocated a strong and durable climate agreement based on the principles and provisions of the Convention. The Paris Agreement addresses all the important concerns and expectations of India.