Sharm el Sheikh – India at the World Climate Conference (COP27) in Egypt presented a strategy to achieve the desired goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2070. “This is an important step,” India’s Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said during of today’s conference.

“India has shown that it follows words with deeds.” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the target a year ago at COP26 in Glasgow. The plan should be available on the ministry’s website today.

India, the world’s second most populous country with over 1.3 billion people, is one of the biggest sources of climate-damaging emissions along with the United States and China. The country is in dire need of additional energy – and increasingly relies on renewable energy. But India still relies heavily on coal. The population of India is roughly equal to the entire population of the African continent.

According to the strategy, the South Asian country wants to, among other things, reduce climate-damaging emissions in power generation and transportation systems. India’s transport sector accounts for nearly 10% of emissions, he said at the event held today at the India Pavilion of COP27.

“India has contributed little to global warming,” Yadav said. The country also has a great need for development. In the ongoing negotiations for more climate protection, no situation should arise in which the energy security of developing countries is ignored in order to reduce emissions.

At the climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, representatives of almost 200 countries want to agree on new common measures against global warming. The conference officially ends on Friday, but an extension seems possible. © dpa/aerzteblatt.de