The National Action Plan on Climate Change, which was unveiled by the Government last week, is much more than India's response to the challenge from climate change. It is a roadmap for ensuring long-term energy security of the country leading to sustainable development, Prime Minister’s special envoy on climate change Shyam Saran has said.

Saran, who is accompanying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the G-8 summit in Japan where climate change is one of the important issues for discussion, said the biggest challenge before the Government in ensuring long-term sustainable development was finding cheap and clean sources of energy. This is where the national action plan will try to make a difference by exploring ways to make a shift from conventional sources of energy to alternative sources.

“This is a plan for ensuring sustainable development. Even if there were no climate change, the biggest constraint that India would face while trying to maintain a high growth rate would be in finding alternative and cheap sources of energy. This plan is also aimed at providing energy security for the country,” Saran told The Indian Express.

“Without making a strategic shift from fossil fuels to non-fossil fuels and from non-renewable energy sources to renewable sources of energy, the energy constraint cannot be addressed,” he said.

Saran said climate change, energy security and development were closely related and neither can be seen in isolation.

“Unless we link climate change with energy security, we would not be able to go very far,” he said.

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