Prime Minister Manmohan Singh officially released the action plan that has identified eight ‘missions’, which will be pursued as key components of India’s strategy for ensuring a clean and sustainable development. More and more use of solar energy, ensuring high levels of efficiency in energy use, conservation of water and sustaining the Himalayan eco-system are some of the missions that have been identified under this plan.

Referring to the absence of any commitments to reduce India’s greenhouse gas emissions, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh re-emphasised the country’s long-held stand that the ultimate objective of the world should be to move towards equitable convergence of per-capita emissions. He also reiterated that India would never allow it per-capita emissions to grow more than that of the developed countries.

“Every citizen of this planet must have an equal share of the planetary atmospheric space. Long-term convergence of per-capita emissions is, therefore, the only equitable basis for a global compact on climate change,” Manmohan Singh said after releasing the action plan. “I have already declared, as India’s Prime Minister, that despite our developmental imperatives, our per-capita Green House Gas (GHG) emissions will not exceed the per-capita GHG emissions of the developed industrialised countries,” he said.

The Prime Minister stressed on the need to tap India’s traditional knowledge base to ensure that its developmental needs do not clash with the need to keep the environment clean. “The time has come for us to draw deep from ancient tradition and launch India on a path of ecologically-sustainable development. Our people have a right to economic and social development and to discard the ignominy of widespread poverty. For this, we need rapid economic growth. But I also believe that ecologically-sustainable development need not be in contradiction to achieving our growth objectives,” the Prime Minister said.