India Lags in Net Access, Ranks 131 in ICT Index

India Lags in Net Access, Ranks 131 in ICT Index





India has been ranked 131 out of 167 countries by the ICT Development Index of the International Telecommunication Union, which measures countries according to their level of ICT (information, communication and technology) access, use and skills. Although India has made tremendous progress in raising its telecom density, the country remains far behind when it comes to providing internet access. The ITU report, Measuring the Information Society, said that 3.2 billion people are now online, or 43.4% of the global population. In contrast, only 18% Indians have access to the internet. Worldwide, 7.1 billion people are covered by a mobile-cellular signal. By the end of this year, 46% of households globally will have internet access at home, up from 44% last year and just 30% in 2010. In India, 15.3% of households have internet access. Here's a look...

Global Agricultural Transition Under Way to Boost Resilience to Climate Change and Reduce Emissions

Global Agricultural Transition Under Way to Boost Resilience to Climate Change and Reduce Emissions
Six Cooperative Initiatives Driving Climate Resilient, Productive and Low Emissions Agriculture
Paris, 1 December 2015 - Governments and food and agriculture organizations join today at the LPAA Focus on Agriculture to respond to the urgent climate challenges facing agriculture with six cooperative initiatives that will protect the long-term livelihoods of millions of farmer and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Agriculture is one of the sectors most seriously affected by extreme climate but it also accounts for 24 % of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which cause climate change.
The initiatives focus on four key areas: soils in agriculture, the livestock sector, food losses and waste, and sustainable production methods and resilience of farmers.
Together, these partnerships will deploy money and know-how across both developed and developing nations to help hard-pressed farmers become key actors in the global drive to achieve a low-carbon, climate-resilient future.
This exceptional half-day reveals the effective and concrete progress that can be made when a wide, international set of stakeholders work together to build resilience and low-carbon systems of production in agricultural and food systems.
At the heart of the Action Agenda, the six major initiatives supporting farmers include:
The “4/1000 Initiative: Soils for Food Security and Climate”
Officially launched today by a hundred partners (developed and developing states, international organizations, private foundations, international funds, NGOs and farmers' organization) the 4/1000 Initiative aims to protect and increase carbon stocks in soils. Soils can store huge quantities of carbon and contributing to limitation of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere, supplementing the necessary efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally and generally throughout the economy.The partners decided to reinforce their actions on appropriate soil management, recognizing the importance of soil health for the transition towards productive, highly resilient agriculture. This initiative intends to show that a small increase of 4/1000 per year of the soil carbon stock (agricultural soils, notably grasslands and pastures, and forest soils) is a major leverage in order to improve soil fertility, resilience of farmers and contribute to the long-term objective of keeping the global average temperature increase below 2 degrees.
Life Beef Carbon
Farmers from four European countries are joining forces and taking the lead to reduce the carbon footprint of the livestock sector. Initially launched in October 2015, the “Life Beef Carbon” initiative, inspired by France’s Dairy Carbon Program, aims at promoting innovative livestock farming systems and associated practices to ensure the technical, economic, environmental and social sustainability of beef farms, and thus to reduce the contribution of livestock production to GHG emissions. The initiative aims to reduce the beef carbon footprint by 15% over 10 years in France, Ireland, Italy and Spain.
“Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme” (ASAP)
Through this initiative, IFAD and its partners commit to investing climate finance in poor smallholder farmers in developing countries to generate multiple benefits. Smallholder farmers are among the best possible clients for climate finance. Such investments can increase agricultural productivity while at the same time restoring and maintaining a resilient natural resource base and reducing agriculture's carbon footprint. This initiativeis being reinforced by 12 additional countries joining the current list of 44 country partners, increasing the total amount of committed ASAP funds up to US$285 million. By 2034, this additional funding will avoid or sequester 80 million tons of GHG emissions (CO2e) and will strengthen the resilience of 8 million smallholders.
15 West-African Countries Transitioning to Agro-ecology
The Promotion of Agro-ecology Transition in West Africa is a regional initiative led by ECOWAS and focused on Africa. It concerns 15 countries, including Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Senegal. The main financial partners include the European Union, the World Bank, and the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) of the African Union. This impact-full initiative delivers both adaptation and emission mitigation benefit. It will allow the adoption of agro-ecological practices by 25 million households by 2025.
The Blue Growth Initiative (BGI)
A multi-partner initiative led by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that supports climate resilience, food security, poverty alleviation and sustainable management of living aquatic resources in coastal communities, especially in small island developing states. The actions aim at a 10% reduction in carbon emissions from fishery value chains in 10 target countries within 5 years (and 25% within 10 years), and the reduction of overfishing by 20% in the target countries within 5 years (50% within 10 years).
The SAVE FOOD Initiative - (the Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction)
Thisis a unique partnership led by FAO, with over 500 companies and organizations from industry and civil society active in food loss and waste reduction. It aims to drive innovations, promote interdisciplinary dialogue and spark debates to generate solutions across the entire value chain, “from field to fork”. This initiative has recently developed a technical platform, that will be launched in the coming days, to measure and reduce food loss and waste. Altogether, this should allow a major reduction in agriculture emissions, as global food waste and loss account for 3.3Gt of CO2 equivalent per year.
To find out more about all the initiatives presented under the Agriculture Focus, please refer to the press kit online.
The 4/1000 initiative
The “Life Beef Carbon” initiative
The “Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme”
The Promotion of agro-ecology transition in West Africa
The Blue Growth Initiative
The “Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction – SAVE FOOD”
ABOUT LPAA
The Lima-Paris Action Agenda is a joint undertaking of the Peruvian and French COP presidencies, the Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the UNFCCC Secretariat. It aims to strengthen climate action throughout 2015, in Paris in December and well beyond through: mobilizing robust global action towards low carbon and resilient societies; providing enhanced support to existing initiatives, such as those launched during the NY SG Climate summit in September 2014; and mobilizing new partners and providing a platform for the visibility of their actions, commitments and results in the run up to COP21.

UPSC 2015 MAINS ADMIT CARD IS OUT

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Modi launches International Solar Alliance

The new body, which has invited all countries located fully or partly between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn to join, is to function from the National Institute of Solar Energy in India, Gurgaon.

India launched an International Solar Alliance (ISA) at the CoP21 Climate Conference here on Monday, with an announcement by Prime Minister Modi that the revolution in the field would bring power to all citizens, and create unlimited economic opportunity.

The new body, which has invited all countries located fully or partly between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn to join, is to function from the National Institute of Solar Energy in India, Gurgaon. The Centre will provide land and $30 million to form a secretariat for the Alliance, and also support it for five years, the Prime Minister said at an event that was co-chaired with him by French President Francois Hollande.

In its launch resolution, the ISA says it seeks to share collective ambitions to reduce the cost of finance and technology that is needed to deploy solar power widely; generation and storage technologies would be adapted to the individual countries’ needs.

Among the tasks that the Alliance would pursue are, cooperation in training, building institutions, regulatory issues, common standards, and investment including joint ventures.

Addressing a packed audience, which was treated to visuals and a song on the theme, Mr.Modi said solar had created a revolution, as costs had declined sharply, technology continued to evolve and grid connectivity was improving. The response from industry was also encouraging. The Prime Minister presented “Convenient Action”, a book he has written on the Gujarat experience with solar energy and a music CD with songs on the environment to Mr. Hollande.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the United Nations would work closely with the ISA and commended India’s success in adopting the technology, as witnessed in the solar projects in Gujarat.

Union Minister of State for Power Piyush Goyal presented the goals of the ISA contained in its resolution.

he offer from Mr. Gates and others was part of a larger initiative with world governments that promised to double spending on renewable energy research.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and other investors on Monday pledged $7 billion for research and development of clean energy. Mr. Gates said they hoped to get others to pitch in more in the coming days.

The offer from Mr. Gates and others was part of a larger initiative with world governments that promised to double spending on renewable energy research.

Mr. Gates told reporters that he hoped to see more investors sign on “possibly this week.” The money is being raised by wealthy investors and the University of California.

He, however, warned potential investors that new energy technologies take longer than IT or biotech to launch.

The fund will support a wide range of technologies, Mr. Gates said. “Biofuels, carbon capture, high wind, fission, fusion — we’re unbiased but it has to be clean and possible to scale up cheaply.”

Backers include U.S. President Barack Obama, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, billionaires George Soros and Saudi Prince Alaweed bin Talal, Jack Ma of China’s Alibaba and Indian industrialist Mukesh Ambani.

In another announcement, the United States, Canada and nine European countries pledged nearly $250 million to help the most vulnerable countries adapt to rising seas, droughts and other consequences of climate change. Germany pledged $53 million, the U.S. $51 million and Britain $45 million.

Modi asks rich nations to cut emissions, share carbon space with poor

Prime Minister wants the $100 billion a year plan for assistance from the rich to poor nations by 2020 expedited.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned the focus of the Paris Climate Conference to the historic high carbon emissions of rich nations and asked them to ratify the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol which major emitters have not done.

Addressing the Leaders Event at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change here on Monday evening, Mr. Modi said the developed world should ratify Kyoto's second commitment in the period up to 2020, after which developing countries have pledged to begin their own voluntary actions.

The Indian Prime Minister's reference to the Protocol stood out at the COP21 conference, where the discussions were mostly future-focussed, for the post-2020 era. The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ended in 2012 and many advanced nations have baulked at engaging in mitigation actions, looking at domestic political compulsions.

In a clear message that the onus of mitigation fell on the West, Mr. Modi said in an equitable system emissions reduction should be consistent with the carbon space that nations occupy.

"Developed countries must fulfil their responsibility to make clean energy affordable and accessible to all in the developing world," he said, and wanted the $100 billion a year plan for assistance from the rich to poor nations by 2020 expedited.

Mr. Modi demanded that the rich nations meet their obligations in a credible and transparent manner. Apparently referring to the pressure that countries like India may face under a Paris deal, he said he welcomed stock-taking that was done in a transparent manner, where it covered both support and commitment based on the principle of differentiation. The U.N.'s principles of equity and Common But Differentiated Responsibilities should firmly underpin any formulation.

Acknowledging the reality that conventional energy sources such as coal would continue to be used at present, the Prime Minister said funds were necessary to clean up coal-based generation. This could be done using the Green Climate Fund which needs scaling up, he said.

INDC goals outlined

The major voluntary pledges made by India for the post-2020 period were outlined for the heads of state by Mr. Modi, with particular mention of the plan to reduce carbon intensity of growth by 33-35 per cent over 2005 levels, raise the share of non-fossil fuel power to 40 per cent by 2030, and to produce 175 GW of renewable power by 2022.

He said forest cover would be expanded to absorb 2.5 billion tonnes worth of carbon dioxide and fossil fuel dependence would be reduced by levying taxes as well as cutting subsidies. Cities would be transformed through improvements to their efficiency and improving public transport.

According to scientific assessments, in 2014, India was the third largest emitter of atmosphere-warming greenhouse gases (7 per cent), with China (25 per cent) and the U.S. (15 per cent) occupying the first and second positions. However, viewed in historical terms, India's contribution to the cumulative stock of gases already in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution is negligible, with America occupying the major share.

IMF names yuan global reserve currency

At present, the basket of currencies that make up the IMF’s Special Drawing Right include the dollar, euro, yen, and pound sterling.

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund on Monday decided to include the Chinese currency, the renminbi (yuan), into its basket of currencies that make up the IMF’s Special Drawing Right (SDR). The decision was taken during the IMF’s five-yearly review of the basket of currencies.

“The Executive Board's decision to include the RMB in the SDR basket is an important milestone in the integration of the Chinese economy into the global financial system. It is also a recognition of the progress that the Chinese authorities have made in the past years in reforming China’s monetary and financial systems,” Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, said following the review meeting.

The continuation and deepening of these efforts will bring about a more robust international monetary and financial system, which in turn will support the growth and stability of China and the global economy, Ms. Lagarde added.

The SDR, created by the IMF in 1969, functions like an international reserve, allowing member countries to draw upon any of the reserve currencies in the basket. At present, these include the dollar, euro, yen, and pound sterling. Following the IMF’s decision, this basket will also include the renminbi from October 1, 2016 onwards.

Earlier this month, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian had told The Hindu that the renminbi’s inclusion in the SDR basket, while great news for China, would also be good for India. The specifications of becoming a reserve currency mean that China’s ability to manipulate the renminbi will now be limited. India has so far had to deal with China’s over-capacity as well as its devalued currency.

The renmimbi becoming a reserve currency will at least lessen the latter problem, Mr. Subramanian had said at the time.

The inclusion of the renminbi in this basket has been backed by most of the major economies, including Germany, Britain, France and Italy. While the US was historically cautious about the idea, President Obama in September had said that the US would support China’s case for inclusion in the SDR basket if it met the IMF’s technical specifications.