Climate Change-Global Scenario: Green Growth

Green Growth

  • OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) released a report.
  • Title- “Green Growth Indicators 2017” .
  • Highlights-The slow progress in achieving the Green Growth.
  • Fostering economic growth and development.
  • Ensuring the natural assets continue to provide the resource and environment services.
  • Measured by Green Growth Indicators.

Covering everything from land use to CO2 productivity and innovation like

  • Environmental and resource productivity.
  • The natural asset base.
  • Environmental dimension of quality of life.
  • Economic opportunities and policy responses.

Report Highlights

  • China and the US extract the most non-energy raw materials.
  • India and Brazil (mostly biomass) and South Africa and Canada (mostly metals) .
  • Nearly 90% of green technologies originate in OECD countries.
  • Rising contributions of India and China.

Global Green Growth Institution (GGGI)

  • Headquartered in Seoul (South Korea) .
  • A treaty based inter-governmental organization.
  • India is not the founding member but associated with research work.

Established in 2012 at the Rio + 20 United Nations Conferences on Sustainable Development.

  • Green Growth and Development relevance to India
  • A collaborative project of Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) .
  • The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) .

Mitigation Measures

Green Climate Fund

  • Recent G20 summit at Hamburg.
  • Disagreement between the US and the other 19 countries.
  • Sustainability of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) .
  • A global fund created to support the efforts of developing countries.
  • Responding to the challenge of climate change.
  • Set up by the 194 countries who are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2010.
  • Part of the Convention՚s financial mechanism.
  • Delivery of equal amounts of funding to mitigation and adaptation coming from developed
  • Countries and also from some developing countries, regions and one city (Paris) .

GCF՚s activities and Fund՚s attention

  • Principle of country ownership.
  • National and subnational organisations.
  • Receives funding directly.
  • Needs of societies.
  • Least Developed Countries (LDCs) .
  • African.
  • States Small Island Developing States (SIDS) .

Global Seed Vault

  • The Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
  • Completion of 10 years of official opening.
  • It is a state-of-the-art seed protection facility.
  • Also known as the Doomsday or the Apocalypse Seed Bank or Noah՚s Ark for seeds.
  • Situated in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago.
  • Established in 2008.
  • Serves as the primary backup for the world՚s other seed banks.
  • Holding nearly one million seed samples from the world՚s gene banks at present.

India՚s Seed Vault

  • Situated at Chang La, Ladakh.
  • Joint initiative of the Defence Institute of High Altitude Research (DIHAR) and the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) in 2010.
  • Under the aegis of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) .
  • Seed facility available in India- One set up by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) New Delhi.

Indian Quake and Sagar Vani

  • Ministry of Earth Sciences.
  • India Quake app and Sagar Vani app launched.
  • To enable users receive information about natural hazards on land and water.

Quake App

  • Developed by National centre for Seismology.
  • Automatic dissemination of earthquake parameter such as location, time and magnitude.
  • Avoid delay of information in the vent of magnitude.

Sagar Vani App

  • Ministry of Earth Sciences.
  • A software platform.
  • Developed by ESSO Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) .
  • Uses state of art technology for dissemination of ocean related information.
  • Advisory services such as Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ) advisories.
  • Ocean State Forecast (OSF) .
  • High Wave Alerts and Tsunami early warnings.

ESSO-Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS)

  • Set up as an autonomous body.
  • Ministry of Earth Sciences.
  • A unit of Earth System Science Organization (ESSO) .
  • Mandated to provide information and advisory services to government agencies, industries etc.

International Cooperation

Sustainable Biofuels

  • Two day international conference.
  • Hosted by India on behalf of Mission Innovation and Biofuture Platform.

First Generation of Biofuels

  • Produced directly from food crops.
  • Most widely used feedstock- Wheat and Sugar.

Second Generation Biofuel

  • Produced from marginal croplands.
  • Unsuitable for food production or non-food crops.
  • Wood, organic waste, food crop waste.
  • For example- Jatropha.
  • Aimed at being cost competitive in relation to existing fossil fuels and increasing Net energy gains.

Third Generation Biofuels

  • Based on improvements on the production of biomass.
  • Advantage of specially engineered energy crops such as algae as its energy source.

Algae are cultured to act

  • A low-cost.
  • High energy.
  • Renewable feedstock.

Fourth Generation Biofuels

  • Aimed at producing sustainable energy.
  • Capturing and storing carbon dioxide.
  • The carbon dioxide captured can be then geo-sequestered.
  • Fourth generation biofuel production has become carbon negative due to carbon capture.
  • India՚s first generation (2G) Ethanol plant has been setup in Uttarakhand.

Challenges

  • Sustainable Biofuel Innovation Challenge (SBIC) .
  • Smart Grids Innovation Challenge.
  • Carbon Capture Innovation Challenge.
  • Converting Sunlight Innovation Challenge.
  • Clean Energy Materials Innovation Challenge.
  • Off-Grid Access to Electricity Innovation Challenge.

Biofuture Platform

  • A 20-country effort to promote an advanced low carbon bio economy.
  • Sustainable, innovative and scalable.
  • Proposed by Brazil- Serving as the interim secretariat.

National Policy on Bio-Fuels Features

  • Bio-diesel production from non-edible oil seeds in waste⟋degraded⟋marginal lands.
  • An indicative target of 20% blending of biofuels, both for bio-diesel and bio-ethanol by 2017.
  • With periodic revision Minimum Support Price (MSP) for non-edible oil seeds would be announced.
  • With periodic revision announcement of Minimum Purchase Price (MPP) for purchase of bio-ethanol and bio-diesel.
  • Setting up a National Biofuel Coordination Committee, headed by the Prime Minister.
  • Providing policy guidance and coordination.
  • Setting up Biofuel Steering Committee chaired by Cabinet Secretary.
  • Coordinating Ministry for biofuel development and utilization- The Ministry of New & Renewable Energy.

Examrace Team at Aug 23, 2021