Greenhouse gas emissions from India: Improvements made in GHG inventory estimation

Current Science's paper on improvements made in greenhouse gases (GHG) inventory estimation

This paper published in Current Science analyses the improvements made in greenhouse gases (GHG) inventory estimation reported in the Initial National Communication by India to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) with respect to the earlier published estimates and highlights the strengths, the gaps that still exist and the future challenges for inventory refinement.

The UNFCC enjoins upon the Parties to the Convention to protect the climate system according to their common, but differentiated responsibilities. The parties to the convention are also required to report to the convention on a regular basis, a comprehensive and comparable inventory of anthropogenic greenhouse gases and the steps taken to protect the climate. 

Towards the fulfillment of its obligations, India submitted its initial national communication to the UNFCCC in June 2004. An assessment of the current and projected trends of GHG emission from India and some selected countries indicates that though Indian emissions grew at the rate of 4 per cent per annum during 1990 and 2000 period and are projected to grow further to meet the national developmental needs, the absolute level of GHG emissions in 2020 will be below 5 per cent of global emissions and the per capita emissions will still be low compared to most of the developed countries as well as the global average.

Considerable improvements have been made in the GHG emission inventory reported in the Indian initial national communication to the UNFCCC with respect to the ones reported earlier. The improvements are mainly in the nature of more comprehensive reporting of sources and sinks, the use of a wider emission factor database representing country specific circumstances, and following a bottom up approach.

The total amount of GHGs emitted in India, according to this report, was 1228 million tonnes, which accounted for only 3 per cent of the total global emissions, and of which 63 per cent was emitted as CO2, 33 per cent as CH4, and the rest 4 per cent as N2O.This paper provides information on the Region wise GHG emissions in 1990 and 2000.

Summary of greenhouse gas emissions from India by sources and sinks.