India submits first Biennial Update Report to UNFCCC

January 23, 2016

India has submitted its first Biennial Update Report (BUR) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) towards fulfillment of the reporting obligation.
The BUR has been submitted as per the provisions of the UNFCCC Convention which is obligatory on countries to periodically provide national information.
Key highlights of BUR

BUR has been prepared by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (UNFCC) under its NATCOM project funded by Global Environment Facility (GEF).
Contains national inventory of Green House Gases (GHG) for 2010 and has been prepared in accordance with the guidelines of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
6 GHGs in Inventory: Carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Perfluorocarbons (PFCs), Nitrous Oxide (N2O), Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6) and Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).
Five categories: It covers agriculture, waste and Land-use, Land-use, Change and Forestry (LULUCF), energy, industrial processes and product use (IPPU),.
India’s emissions: India has emitted around 2,137 million tonnes (mt) of CO2 equivalent GHGs in 2010.
About 12% of emissions were offset by carbon sink action of croplands and forests. Thus, total of 1,884.31 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent GHGs were emitted.
In 2010, India’s per capita GHG emission was less than one- third of the world’s per capita emissions. It is far below many developed and developing countries.
Category wise Emissions: Energy sector was the prime contributor to emissions with 71%. While, agriculture contributed 18 % and IPPU 8% to the national GHG inventory.

Background

In the conference of Parties (COP)-16 of UNFCCC held in Cancun (Mexico) in 2010 it was decided that the developing countries will submit updates in the form of BUR.
The scope of a BUR is to provide an update to the latest National Communication submitted by the country to the UNFCCC.
Accordingly, India’s first BUR is an update to the Second National Communication which was submitted in 2012. India had submitted its first national communication in 2004.

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