A Critical Evaluation of India's National Adaptation Policy on Climate

This report assesses India's vulnerability to climate change by evaluating its national adaptation policies and action plans. It begins with an introduction to India's context, highlighting its rapid economic growth, large population, and existing challenges like poverty and infrastructure. The report then outlines the methods used for evaluation, focusing on criteria such as autonomous adaptation strategies and alignment with the Cancun Adaptation Framework. A comparison of five key National Missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) – National Water Mission, National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Eco-System, National Mission for a Green India, National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change, and National Solar Mission – is provided, discussing their goals and implementation. The discussion section critically examines the NAPCC, noting its broad approach and lack of specific disaster preparedness measures. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for more structured thinking and ecosystem-based approaches in addressing climate change vulnerabilities in India. This document is available on Desklib, a platform offering study tools and solved assignments for students.

[CLIMATE change vulnerability and adaptaion]

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Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Methods......................................................................................................................................3
Criteria being used for Evaluation..........................................................................................3
Overview of Indian.................................................................................................................3
Comparison................................................................................................................................5
Discussion..................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Global warming is the term that is affecting every country of the world and India is also
facing the ill effects of global warming. India is a world’s fastest growing economy across the
globe and it is situated in South Asia. India is the second most inhabited nation of the world
and in terms of area, it ranked seven. India is considered to be a vulnerable nation because it
involve the issues like poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and lack of administration
arrangement while dealing with the complicated issues (Meenu, Rehana and Mujumdar,
2013). It is been analysed that Climate change is the universal issue and to address the issues
the government of India has developed an Advisory Council. In June 2008, for Climate
change the Advisory Council has developed eight National Action plans. The action plan is
comprised of main eight National Missions among them five are developed for addressing the
issues of climate change these are National Mission for Green India, National Mission for
Sustainable Agriculture, National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, National
Mission on Strategic Knowledge for climate change, National Solar Mission and National
Water Missions
This report is developed to evaluate the key areas of vulnerabilities in India and to find out
the action plans and policies developed by the administration to solve these problem relating
to Climate change. This report covers the three main heading, first heading is methods in
which the criteria and the brief overview of the company has been discussed, the second
heading is comparison in this heading out of eight National Missions five which are suitable
for the report are discussed and the third heading is discussion in which contains the
information which are mention in the comparison section.

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Methods
Criteria being used for Evaluation
In previous, the government of India has adopted an autonomous adaptation strategy.
Autonomous adaptation strategy is nothing but a response to adjustment take place in human
system and nature. To report the impact of climate change and to control and prevent the
environment risk the government has developed various programs and those programs are
public funded. The main objective of the programs or action plans of government are
developed to reduce vulnerability of climate risk. In India, the action plans of the government
provide its focus on main three areas these are targeting, mitigating and adapting climate
change (Asseng, et.al. 2013). The main priority of the Government of India is energy access.
Providing energy to 400 million people is a challenge for them. In modern world, electricity
has become a very important part of living. For the government it becomes important to make
off-grid solutions such as availing sustainable clean energy sources and solar energy (Field,
2014). The administration of India has implemented the domestic plan of climate change. In
the country, numerous of its states are mounting state-level action plans that comprise
components relating to climate change alteration. Manmohan Singh the former Prime
Minister of India provide his emphasis on the issue of carbon extraction and put that in the
priority (Field, 2014). To evaluate the criteria of adaptation strategies section 11-35 need to
consider that are mentioned in the Cancun Adaptation Framework. Among section, 11-35
specifically section 12, 14, 15, 20, 32 and 34 were used to evaluate the plan. In 2008, the
Government of Indian has decided to develop the action plan that is going to help the country
in ensuring the sustainable development

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Overview of Indian
Indian is an Asian country that is situated in the southern part of Asia the country shares its
land boundaries with Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and China. The
Arabian Sea to the west, the Indian oceans to the south and Bay of Bengal to east surround
the country. In Northern, part the country is having Himalayan Mountain range. The country
is a second most populated nation and area wise seventh biggest country in the world (Souza,
2018). It is expected that in the next 25 years Indian will be the most populous country. The
land area of India spread over 3,287,263 sq. Km, the four geographical regions of the country
are Desert in the west, Mountains in north, southern peninsula and plain region in the east. In
present, the estimated population of the country is 1.21 billion, among them 29% of the
population is living in urban areas. India is comprised of 29 state and seven union territories
(Souza, 2018). New Delhi is a capital of India. Hindi is a national or official language of the
country however, English also is widely spoken language in the cities. Across India, 21
regional languages are used for communication in particular areas. Among the population of
country 80.5% residents are Hindus, 1.9% are Sikhs, 2.3% are Christian, 13.4% are Muslim
and 1.8% includes other religions such as Jains, Parsis and Buddhists (Souza, 2018). The
country literacy rate is 61% and the life expectancy rate is 67.14 years. The rupee is the
official currency of the country. India ranked 11 in term of GDP. The economy of India is an
open economy. The Major trade partners of the country are Japan, Russia, European Union,
United Arab Emirates, USA and China. In India, natural resources like Crude oil, diamonds,
titanium ore, thorium, barite, limestone, chromite, bauxite, manganese, mica, coal, iron ore
were found (Chu, 2016). The rising temperature, extreme weather changes, disturbed rainfall
pattern, melting Himalayan glaciers and rising sea level are providing an adverse impact on
the forests, health, agriculture, water resource and coastal areas. On climate change, India is
spending around $10 billion, every year that is expected to increase by 2022 (Souza, 2018).

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Comparison
With National Mission for Climate Change India has announced the Nationwide Action plan.
The Central Government of the country has requested their certified bodies to develop the
detailed plan for attaining the goals. The Government has developed eight National policies
or missions that can help them in attaining their goals the five National Plan or Missions are
discussed below
National Water Mission
The NAPCC has described the National Water Mission as ‘National Water mission is
developed to make sure the minimization of water waste, to integrate water resources
supervision to preserve water and to make sure more reasonable dissemination of water
across and inside states (Adger, et.al. 2013). The five major goals of the Mission are first
increasing use of water efficiently by 20%, next is the elevation of state and citizen act for
water preservation, conservation and augmentation, another is the advancement of basin level
assimilated water possessions management, fourth is focused attention on vulnerable areas
and fifth is a wide-ranging water record in communal assessment and domain. For the
finance of the Mission, the government provide funds to the department. It is been assessed
that most of the Funds are provided by the Ministry for the implementation of the program.
National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Eco-System
The National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Eco-System (NMSHE) is a cross-cutting,
multi-pronged mission and it involvement in the ecological development of the nation.
NMSHE improves the thoughtfulness about the climate changes, and adaptation actions
required for the Himalayas. The primary and most crucial objective of the NMSHE is it helps
in developing the defensible capability nationwide to evaluate the health status of the
Himalayan ecosystem, with the implementation of action plan it will assist states of India

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which are lies in the Himalayan region and empower policy-making bodies in strategy
origination (Dubash, 2013). The objective of the mission is further divided into a few specific
activities for the sustainable development of the Himalayan Eco-System.
National Mission for a Green India
The aim behind the development of the National Mission for a Green India is that the
authorities want to enhance, restored and protect the diminishing forest and to respond to the
climate change. The Mission provides its focus on the multiple ecosystem services such as
water, biodiversity, wetlands, critical habitats, biomass, preserving mangroves etc. along with
co-benefits of carbon sequestration. The National Mission for a Green India has approved a
unified cross-sectoral approach because it implements on both private as well as public lands
(Chandel, Shrivastva, Sharma and Ramasamy, 2016). The main goals of the mission are they
want to increase the area of forests up to 5 million hectares to advance the feature of forest
and the forest lands, the second goal of the mission is to improve the ecosystem services such
as non-timber forest produces, timber and carbon sequestration and storage, and last to
increase the income of 3 million households through forest-based livelihood.
National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change
Government has developed the National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate
Change to shape a vibrant and energetic Knowledge structure in India. The knowledge
structure will support and inform the national policy and action plan to respond effectively to
the climate changes. The main objectives of National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for
Climate Change are partnership through worldwide collaboration, building alliances,
complementing the efforts made by other Missions, development of the national capacity for
modelling the regional impact of climate change and formulation of the network (Sahoo,
2016).

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National Solar Mission
The government in June 2008 with the motive of identifying the technology development
solar energy in the nation launched the countrywide solar mission. On January 2011, the
Government of India has provided its approval for the mission. It is recommended to the
Solar mission that they implement the plan in three stages that will lead up to the installed
capacity of 20000 MW by 2022 (Moors, et.al. 2013). Other than ecological and energy
security the solar mission has the lead of devolved dissemination of energy. India is the
tropical country where the sun and its rays are easily available it will make the working of the
mission more easily. The purpose of the project is to provide its emphasis on enabling
surroundings for solar technology diffusion in both decentralised and centralised level.
Discussion
The Government of India has developed eight plans or action plans to solve the problems
relating to the climate change. The action plan is formed because the country is one of the
most vulnerable countries and as its result the country is facing challenges like Climate
changes. Due to climate changes, the country is facing various issues and to control and
prevent the country from the ill effect of the environment variation the administration of India
has developed a major eight Missions. The development of the mission is the good step taken
by the country. However, the plan did not provide any justification regarding why only these
eight missions are developed (Quitzow, 2015). The missions of government did not provide
any evidence stating that they are using structured thinking in the plan and eco-system based
approach. In the recent few years, India has experienced frequent floods and droughts in
various part and because of these natural disaster millions of people get affected. The national
Mission of the government did not involve the preparedness for these kinds of natural
disasters and because of that human lives get affected. The plans just focus on the preserving

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the environment none of the plans is based on or provides its focus on the security and safety
of the resident of the country. If the country experienced any kind of natural disasters, none
of the mission can provide their assistance in the safety of the human the only thing these
plans can do is they can distribute compensation to the people who got affected by the
disaster (Gupta, et.al. 2015).
In present, the approach of the environment variation is seen in the NAPCC that is too broad
and less specificities. However, the energy efficiency solar and forestry mission that include
mitigation components in the form of the mission on sustainable agriculture, quantified
targets and water and sustainable Himalayan are purely adaptive (Reddy, Sreelekshmi, Jha
and Dadhwal, 2013). The missions dealing with the Subjects such as forestry, agriculture,
water, sustainable habitat are multi-departmental, overlapping and multi-sectoral in nature
and for these factors the government has developed the eight missions. It is important for the
government to bring time-to-time changes in the policies and try to cover every aspect of the
society with nature.
Conclusion
The eight mission or action plans are the effective and systematic step of the Indian
Government to solve the problems like global warming. The Action plans of the government
include the associated budget, concrete action points and its specific target. The government
develops the action plans when they found out that for sustainable development and reduction
in climate risk is very important for the country and the people of the country. On the
document, the action plan of the country looks very effective but when it comes at
implementation, the plan is not satisfactory. The plan of the government has failed to address
the issues related to the vulnerable population. It is recommended that the government should
bring some changes to the plans and them more effective and sustainable.

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References
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dimensions of climate change impacts and adaptation. Nature Climate Change, 3(2), p.112.
Asseng, S., Ewert, F., Rosenzweig, C., Jones, J.W., Hatfield, J.L., Ruane, A.C., Boote, K.J.,
Thorburn, P.J., Rötter, R.P., Cammarano, D. and Brisson, N., (2013) Uncertainty in
simulating wheat yields under climate change. Nature Climate Change, 3(9), p.827.
Chandel, S.S., Shrivastva, R., Sharma, V. and Ramasamy, P., (2016) Overview of the
initiatives in renewable energy sector under the national action plan on climate change in
India. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 54, pp.866-873.
Chu, E., (2016) The political economy of urban climate adaptation and development planning
in Surat, India. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 34(2), pp.281-298.
Dubash, N.K., (2013) The politics of climate change in India: narratives of equity and
cobenefits. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 4(3), pp.191-201.
Field, C.B. (2014) Climate change 2014–Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability: Regional
aspects. Cambridge University Press.
Gupta, N., Rajvanshi, A., Sathyakumar, S., Johnson, J.A., Sivakumar, K., Rawat, G.S. and
Mathur, V.B., (2015) Need for targeted education programme for preparedness and
formulating adaptive strategies in the Indian Himalayan region. Current Science, 109(7),
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Moors, E., Singh, T., Siderius, C., Balakrishnan, S. and Mishra, A., (2013) Climate change
and waterborne diarrhoea in northern India: Impacts and adaptation strategies. Science of the
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Reddy, C.S., Sreelekshmi, S., Jha, C.S. and Dadhwal, V.K., (2013) National assessment of
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