28 Apr :India on Wednesday announced setting up of a fund that would help South Asia effectively meet urgent adaptation and capacity building needs posed by the climate change and also proposed establishment of innovation centres in the region to develop sustainable energy technologies.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made the announcement at the 16th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit that began in Thimphu on Wednesday with an apt theme –“Towards a Green and Happy South Asia’.
“I am happy to announce the setting up of an ‘India Endowment for …

30 Oct : Setting up of state councils for climate change and establishment of a Himalayan Sustainable Development Forum under which Chief Ministers of the five hill states would annually meet formed the part of the ‘Shimla Declaration’ on environment, which was issued in Shimla.

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal read the 12-point ‘Shimla Declaration’ on which five Himalayan states Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, agreed to work in co-ordination for environment protection and pursuing sustainable growth.
Terming the declaration as ‘historic’, Dhumal said,”It has …

17 oct :  Maldivian cabinet on Saturday met at the bottom of the sea, marking the first ever such meeting to be held underwater, which framed an SOS to global leaders to save their atoll nation from being submerged by the rising seas.
The SOS in the shape of a declaration was approved at the 25-minute cabinet meeting presided over by President Mohammad Nasheed.
The declaration will be presented at the Copenhagen meet on climate change in December, with Nasheed saying that Maldives was not the only country facing such a calamity.

“If …

14 Oct :The stalemate over carbon emission cuts continues with the developed countries failing to deliver on issues like setting concrete targets for reduction even after the latest round of negotiations in Bangkok, according to a UN Climate Change team.
“Little progress was made on the core political issues such as mid-term emission reduction targets for industrialised countries,” Janos Pasztor, head of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s climate change support team, told journalists in United Nations.
The IPCC recommends that emission cuts by developed nations need to fall between 25 percent to 40 …

24 Aug : The Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change today approved “in principle” the National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency. Approving the Mission, the Prime Minister said that, “This Mission will enable about Rs. 75,000 crores worth of transactions in energy efficiency. In doing so, it will, by 2015, help save about 5% of our annual energy consumption, and nearly 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year”.
The Mission is the second of the eight missions under India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change to be approved by the …