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The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has elucidated that the uninterrupted emission of greenhouse gases has resulted in climate change posing the biggest existential threat to humanity. India, which stretches from the Himalayas to the fertile plains of Ganges to the long west and east coast, is experiencing an array of climate change impacts. India's vulnerability is closely tied to the region's geography, economy, and population patterns. Considering the colossal population, vulnerability, and gross GHG emission, the success of climate action in India will be a major contributory factor in the global response to climate change. India has played a proactive and prominent role in elucidating the position of developing nations in climate negotiation but has not enacted climate-specific legislation. As a consequence, the climate responses have been a continuum of policy actions, drawing on various provisions of the Indian Constitution, and existing environmental legislative provisions drawing on the various international environmental instruments to which India is a signatory. Forest management is a sector closely linked with climate change in terms of impacts and addressing climate change in India. The Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) targets of India envisaged under the Paris Agreement reveal the weightage attached to forests in the climate change response. This paper attempts to capture the legislative framework governing climate change in India, focusing on the general environment protection laws and forest management. It also explores whether the legal framework operating in the forest sector is adequate to address the climate concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India submitted its second Biennial Update Report (BUR II) to the UNFCCC on 31 December 2018, which builds upon the information presented in the Second National Communication (SNC). Being a non-Annex I party to the Convention, India like many other developing nations has to fulfil its reporting obligation of furnishing BURs every two years to intimate its climate mitigation efforts. Biennial reporting is aimed at highlighting trends in the national greenhouse gas inventory, mitigation actions, need for climate-friendly technologies, finance, capacity-building and lastly existing domestic Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) mechanisms. The comprehensiveness and depth of information present in BUR II, have increased considerably in comparison to its earlier version (BUR I). This paper suggests points relevant for improvizing on key aspects related to energy demands, MRV and the technology transfer process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International efforts to avoid dangerous climate change have historically focused on reducing energy-related CO2 emissions from countries with either the largest economies (e.g. the EU and the USA) and/or the largest populations (e.g. China and India). However, in recent years, emissions have surged among a different and much less-examined group of countries, raising concerns that a next generation of high-emitting economies will obviate current mitigation targets. Here, we analyse the trends and drivers of emissions in each of the 59 countries where emissions in 2010–2018 grew faster than the global average (excluding China and India), project their emissions under a range of longer-term energy scenarios and estimate the costs of decarbonization pathways. Total emissions from these 'emerging emitters' reach as much as 7.5 GtCO2/year in the baseline 2.5° scenario—substantially greater than the emissions from these regions in previously published scenarios that would limit warming to 1.5°C or even 2°C. Such unanticipated emissions would in turn require non-emitting energy deployment from all sectors within these emerging emitters, and faster and deeper reductions in emissions from other countries to meet international climate goals. Moreover, the annual costs of keeping emissions at the low level are in many cases 0.2%–4.1% of countries' gross domestic production, pointing to potential trade-offs with poverty-reduction goals and/or the need for economic support and low-carbon technology transfer from historically high-emitting countries. Our results thus highlight the critical importance of ramping up mitigation efforts in countries that to this point have been largely ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]