Climate change costs India over 2.6 percent of GDP: Economic Survey

September 23rd, 2009 Obama pleads for harder work on climate changeUNITED NATIONS — President Barack Obama has implored world leaders to confront climate change, saying there can be no peace without cooperative work to preserve the planet. Appearing before global leaders gathered at the United Nations, Obama said Wednesday that "the danger posed by climate change cannot be denied — and our responsibility to meet it must not be deferred." The president said "this is why the days when America dragged its feet on this issue are over." He said he understood the tempation of nations to put economic recovery from recession ahead of climate change work, but said that must not be allowed to happen.

September 10th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen who is on a three day visit to India from Thursday, will make an effort to speed up negotiations on climate deal ahead of a key summit in Copenhagen in December. Rasmussen's will have discussion with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri.

September 1st, 2009 KOLKATA - Britain understands the need for economic growth in India and would not pressurise New Delhi to reduce emissions, British Minister for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband said here Tuesday. "I have not come here to ask your government to reduce emissions.

July 21st, 2009 NEW DELHI - Minister for New and Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah on Tuesday said India and United States have decided to work in close tandem in the field of climate change. Abdullah, who met Todd Stern, US Special Envoy for Climate Change here to bridge differences between the two countries on reducing greenhouse gases, favoured transfer of technology to reduce emissions.

July 21st, 2009 NEW DELHI - India's Special Envoy on Climate Change Systems Shyam Saran and his US counterpart Todd Stern will hold talks on climate change today. Stern, who was accompanying US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is staying back here for talks.

July 19th, 2009 GURGAON - Underlining differences with developed countries over climate change, Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh Sunday said India can't accept legally binding greenhouse emission targets. "I like to make it clear and categorical that we are simply not in position to take on legal binding on emission reduction targets," Ramesh said at a conference on climate change at the ITC Green Centre in this satellite town of Delhi.

July 18th, 2009 MUMBAI - There is "no inherent contradiction between poverty eradication and moving towards a low-carbon economy", US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Saturday, signalling her government's approach towards India in the area of combating climate change. "The United States fully supports India's efforts to move all its people out of poverty," Clinton said at a news conference here.

July 16th, 2009 NEW DELHI - India's poor will have enormous problem in arranging their livelihood due to climate change, and it will be better the country stops being a climate sceptic, a government official said Thursday. "There is enough scientific evidence to corroborate the fact that climate change poses unprecedented risks to both human life and in fact, to human civilisation," New and Renewable Energy Secretary Deepak Gupta said at a conference on climate change.

July 15th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Among all other adverse effects that climate change can and has been bringing about is lessening work productivity, according to an Oxfam report which says the productivity in Delhi can drop by 30 percent because of the global warming. The report, 'Suffering the Science - Climate Change, People and Poverty', said besides the more visible effects of climate change - the scanty rainfall these monsoons for instance - there are a whole lot of other implications that have been and will affect our lives.

July 11th, 2009 ON BOARD AIR INDIA ONE - India and China need to resist pressure from industrialised countries on the issue of climate change, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Saturday. The developed countries are by far the biggest polluters of the environment since the start of the Industrial Age.

July 6th, 2009 NEW DELHI - The government will raise the the allocation for cleaning India's rivers and lakes to Rs.562 crore ($110 million) in fiscal 2009-10 from Rs.335 crore last fiscal, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced Monday while presenting the union budget in parliament. Mentioning that the government had unveiled its National Action Plan on Climate Change last year and that eight national missions under it were being finalised, Mukherjee committed that the government would provide "necessary funds" for all the missions.

June 8th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Despite signs of an improving economy, India Inc feels actual recovery will happen only after September, a survey by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has found. According to the survey, conducted by the CII northern region, 96 percent of respondents believe a turnaround would happen only in the second half of 2009-10, thanks to the ongoing global slowdown The survey found 72 percent of respondents expecting the economic growth to be in the range of 5-7 percent this fiscal.

May 29th, 2009 Climate-change diasters kill 300,000 a yearLONDON — Climate-change disasters kill around 300,000 people a year and cause about $125 billion in economic losses, mainly from agriculture, a think-tank led by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan reported Friday.

May 12th, 2009 NEW DELHI - India and Britain have announced five new projects to assess the potential impact of climate change in India and to undertake regional projects to identify and develop adaptation strategies. This was announced at the first Indo-UK Programme on Climate Change Impacts & Adaptation-Phase II workshop here Monday.

February 28th, 2009 NEW DELHI - India Friday stressed that the global economic crisis should not become a cause for developed countries to cut down spending on projects to counter climate change. 'The economic slowdown should not be an excuse to reduce, but to re-double efforts on funding for climate change,' prime minister's envoy on climate change Shyam Saran told reporters here at an interaction.