The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate has released Draft National Resource Efficiency Policy (NREP), 2019. NRPE, 2019 envisions a future with environmentally sustainable and equitable economic growth, resource security, healthy environment (air, water and land), and restored ecosystems with rich ecology and biodiversity. The Draft National Resource Efficiency Policy is guided by the principles of (i) Reduce primary resource consumption to ‘sustainable’ levels, in keeping with achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and staying within the planetary boundaries (ii) Create higher value with less material through resource efficient and circular approaches (iii) Minimize waste creation and loss of embedded resources at the end-of-life of products (iv) Ensure security of material supply and reduce import dependence for essential materials (v) Create employment opportunities and business models beneficial to the cause of environment protection and restoration. 

A new initiative was launched on 23rd September at the UN Climate Action Summit to help guide the world’s heaviest greenhouse gas emitting industries toward the low-carbon economy.

India and Sweden together with Argentina, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, South Korea and the UK, as well as a group of companies including Dalmia Cement, DSM, Heathrow Airport, LKAB, Mahindra Group, Royal Schiphol Group, Scania, SpiceJet, SSAB, ThyssenKrupp and Vattenfall, announced a new Leadership Group for Industry Transition that will drive transformation in hard-to-decarbonize and energy-intensive sectors. 

This global initiative will be supported by the World Economic Forum, the Energy Transitions Commission, Mission Innovation, Stockholm Environment Institute, and the European Climate Foundation among many others in an ambitious, public-private effort, to ensure heavy industries and mobility companies can find a workable pathway to deliver on the Paris Agreement.

Prime Minister of India said that India will achieve most of the COP 21 climate change goals set for 2030 in the next one and half years.  In his address to the Indian community at the UNESCO headquarters, he said there was a lot of talk about dangers of climate change but action was not evident. 

The 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was held in Paris from November 30 to December 12 2015 that saw the participation of 195 nations.

The nations negotiated and adopted the Paris Agreement in which India made four commitments, including reducing greenhouse gas emission intensity of its GDP by 33-35% below 2005 levels by 2030, under its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC).

With investments of $90 billion in renewable energy over the last decade, India is placed sixth in the list of countries that have made the most investments in clean energy, says a new study. China, the United States, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom are the top five countries. While China invested $758 billion, the US came in a distant second with $356 billion in the decade between 2010 and the first half of 2019.