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Climate Change AGRICULTURE AND ALLIED SECTORS

2.141 Climate change has become an agenda for development planning in recent years as it affects
economic processes. The occurrence of health hazards and disaster events, rise in temperature etc
are perceived as the visible impact of climate change and they may induce the loss of biodiversity.
Factors such as Greenhouse Gases, deforestation, land use etc are responsible for climate change.
The developing countries contribute less to the problem of green house gas emission but these
nations are the most exposed to vulnerable impacts of climate change. India’s contribution to global
green house gas emission is 2.7%.

2.142 The Climate Change Conference of Parties under the UN framework Convention on Climate
Change was held in Lima, Peru from 1st to 14th December 2014. The key focus of the Conference
were the following :

• A new 2015 agreement on climate change, that will harness action by all nations which will ad-
dress all elements of Climate Change i.e., mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology develop-
ment, capacity building, transparency in action and support in a balanced manner.

• Developed countries will provide and stabilize enhanced financial support to developing coun-
tries for climate change mitigation and adaptation action.

• Contribution of countries regarding Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) for
reducing global emissions and for providing support to address various climate change issues
has to be more than their current commitments.

• Enhancement of pre-2020 actions i.e., the new global agreement for reducing global carbon
emissions to apply from the year 2020.

2.143 India is taking pro- active steps on enhancing energy efficiency and expansion of renewable
energy in the fight against climate change. Being one of the countries on track to achieve the voluntary
national goal of reducing energy intensity of GDP (as per UNEP Emission Gap Report, 2014), India
represented the interest of the developing countries in the Conference by projecting the various
initiatives taken by the Government as given below:

• Rapid afforestation through Green India Mission
• Expansion in wind energy and other energy efficient measures
• Target of generation 100,000 MW of solar energy
• Doubling of cess on coal for clean technologies
• Devolution of Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Fund

to states for promoting afforestation and regeneration activities.

Section 7
Co- operation and Agricultural Finance

2.144 There are about 6 lakhs cooperative societies in the country. About 100 per cent villages and
71 per cent rural households are covered by these cooperative societies. Around 16 per cent of
agricultural credit & 35 per cent fertilizer is distributed by cooperatives and 26.5 per cent fertilizer is
produced by the cooperatives. Further, 45 per cent of total sugar production in the country comes from
cooperative sugar mills. In the areas of milk production, oil seeds, cotton, handloom and fisheries,
cooperatives are making significant contribution.

2.145 The co-operative movement in Kerala has a solid foundation and impressive record in terms
of strength and financial stability and it is one of the most vibrant cooperative movements in the
country. There are 14602 co-operative societies functioning under the Registrar of Co-operative

Economic Review 2014