Under the guidelines of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), India submitted its first Biennial Update Report (BUR) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) reporting the emission of 2,136.84 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases in 2010.
- BUR has been prepared by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change under its NATCOM project funded by Global Environment Facility (GEF) through UNDP. Several studies were carried out by 17 national-level institutions involving more than 60 researchers.
Key contributors to emission as per BUR (in 2010):
- Energy sector (electricity production, fuel combustion in industries, transport and fugitive emissions) is the prime contributor of emissions with 71% of total emissions in 2010.
- Agriculture contributed 18%.
- 12% of emissions were offset by carbon sink action of forests and croplands.
- Industrial processes and product use contributed 8%.
- Waste sectors contributed 3%.
India’s per capita GHG emission is far below than many developed and developing countries, which was 1.56 tCO2 equivalent and is less than one- third of the world’s per capita emissions.
Biennial Update Report (BUR)
Initiation – UNFCCC in its 16th session of conference of Parties (COP) had instructed developing countries to submit updates to their national communication on biennial basis in the form of “Biennial Update Report”.
- In this regard, 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.
