With climate change impacts worsening and affecting the poor and most vulnerable, governments urgently need to scale up adaptation
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations said the developing countries, including India and China, are unwilling to sign up a new global climate change pact to replace the Kyoto protocol in 2012 as the rich world has failed to set a clear example on cutting carbon emissions. He said rich countrieslike the US, had failed to take the action needed to convince developing nations to sign a deal to help stabilise emissions.
Hillary Clinton said she already has the experience of handling both India and China.
The United Nations on Wednesday supported India's position on climate change and pulled up the United States for its failure to do enough to curb the green house gas (GHG) emissions.
India will publish its revised Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) for the 2035 period by December, Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said on Monday, while urging developed nations to achieve net zero targets ahead of their current timelines.
The consequences of climate change will only grow more dire in the years to come, Obama warned.
President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from over 60 international organisations, including United Nations bodies and the India-France-led International Solar Alliance, calling the institutions 'redundant' and 'contrary' to America's interests.
India hopes to bridge gap with US to buffer against a Paris agreement that restricts country's developmental space.
President Droupadi Murmu on Monday asked scientists and policymakers across the world to give special attention to global warming and climate change which are leading to flash floods and droughts, warning that a "culture of greed" is taking "the world away from nature".
Satat Sampada, the organisation of climate activist Harjeet Singh and his wife, said the allegations made by the Enforcement Directorate against the firm and its founder were baseless, biased and misleading.
The Indian government has announced the replacement of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) with the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin), or VB-G RAM G Act, 2025, effective July 1. The new scheme aims to expand guaranteed wage employment and link it more closely with infrastructure development and climate resilience, but faces concerns from opposition parties and labour rights activists.
For the Jagannath Temple in Puri, the timing of Rath Yatra is a matter of scriptural injunction rather than convenience.
Alarmed by the confusion created by the public expression of divergent opinions by his key advisors on climate change, the prime minister summoned Saran and Ramesh and asked them to put their heads together and come forward with an agreed text that would reflect both their concerns, a senior government official confirmed.
An expert from the ICMR's National Institute of Virology addresses concerns about hantavirus cases detected on a cruise ship, stating there is no immediate public health threat to India and that the cases appear isolated.
The report, Facing a changing world: Women, Population and Climate, released in the United Nations, stressed that the majority of the 1.5 billion people living on one dollar a day or less are women, and they have so far been overlooked in the Climate Change debate.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday met Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates on the sidelines of the climate summit here and discussed ways to further sustainable development, steps to mitigate climate change and vaccine research. The meeting between Modi and the American business magnate, whose foundation is focusing on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, took place after the former launched the Initiative for the Resilient Island States (IRIS) for developing infrastructure of small island nations. Prime Minister Modi expressed appreciation for the work being done by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in India, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement.
The harsh truth is that the US is no longer a reliable partner, cautions Ramesh Menon.
Had it not been for the global concern with respect to 'climate change', the nuclear states with a large stockpile of weapons would not have allowed other countries to adopt nuclear energy, said Dr Anil Kakodkar, member of the Atomic Energy Commission.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar stated that India has demonstrated resilience in the face of recent global shocks, including the conflict in West Asia, while speaking at the convocation ceremony of IIM Raipur. He emphasised the importance of building national capabilities to de-risk and develop leverage in a changing global order.
However, 157 investors managing a total of $14.2 trillion were taking first steps towards addressing climate change
Climate change and environmental degradation will force as many as one billion people to migrate over the next four decades to southeast Asia, central America and parts of west Africa.
Subject to finance & tech from rich countries through an ambitious, fair Paris deal
Small and marginal farmers practising agriculture on rain-fed farms will bear the brunt of climate change
At the roundtable Two, one of the four simultaneous meetings at the conference, a strongly worded statement by Minister of External Affairs S M Krishna said that the talks should focus on the developed countries who are reluctant to meet their commitments on emission reduction, let alone provide technological and financial support to developing countries.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Sunday India would continue to work with like-minded people to make the Copenhagen climate change conference a success.
"Climate change is a global challenge. It can only be succesfully overcome through a global collaborative and cooperative effort. India is prepared to play its role as a responsible member of the international community and make its contribution. He said every citizen of this plant must have an equal share of the planetory atmospheric space. Long-term convergence of per capita emissions is, therefore, the only equitable basis for a global compact on climate change.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday said getting a binding agreement sealed on climate change was among his top priorities for the year after the Copenhagen conference that marked "an important step forward".
"From the Indian point of view, if I were a politician, I'd continue to play it hard," explains Mike Hulme, professor at the University of East Anglia's prestigious climate change programme. "From a rational perspective, India has to do what's best for its people."
This follows concern expressed by environment and forest minister Jairam Ramesh over poor public allocations for research on the impact of climate change in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
The experts said that climate change is not only raising temperatures and making India's heatwaves hotter, but also changing weather patterns that further drive dangerous weather extremes.
US President Barack Obama has sought the help of major countries of the world including China and India in addressing the urgent issue of climate change and clean energy.
The apex global health body reckons that about 150,000 deaths occur annually in low-income countries due to the adverse effects of climate change, chiefly malnutrition due to climate change-driven crop failures, stomach diseases and malaria.
He said the coastal and deltaic regions of India are reported to be vulnerable to the risks of flooding.
The government is finalising the national action plan on climate change and would release this in June, said Shyam Saran, Prime Minister's special envoy for climate change. The action plan would focus on key issues like improving energy efficiency, harnessing solar energy, studying the melting and cracking of icebergs on the Himalayas and understanding the dynamics of coastal and island territories.The plan would contain mechanisms for implementation of various policies.
Javadekar was addressing the 18th BASIC ministerial meeting on climate change here which is being attended by ministers of Brazil, China and South Africa.
The government is contemplating changes to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) to deal with environmental claims and liabilities of defaulting companies to make the law future-ready and meet climate action goals, sources told Business Standard. Currently, the IBC has various categories of claims and creditors, including those related to environmental liabilities.
Climate Challenge India, a climate change mobilisation effort by Bangalore-based NGO Center for Social Markets has produced a film titled In Good Company: Corporate India and the Climate Challenge that partly tries to answer the question but also raises some red flags on the issue. The film was launched in May at the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen. As CSM's founder and climate change campaigner Malini Mehra explains that the film was a labour of love.
Poland's Secretary of State, Wladyslaw T Bartoszewski, has credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi with preventing Russian President Vladimir Putin from using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine in late 2022, highlighting Modi's significant influence on the Russian leader.
Clinton has already said that she is visiting New Delhi to start a strategic dialogue which will include issues like climate change and clean energy. To put the issue of climate change on fast track, Clinton will be joined by President Barrack Obama's special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, who is known as a man in hurry.
After locking horns with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the glacier melting issue, environment minister Jairam Ramesh said on Thursday the research of the Indian panel on climate change would be more 'robust and solid' than the UN body's.