The debate on development vs adaptation is nearly over and a consensus has emerged that adaptive elements in most of development efforts involve defining problems, exercising choice of strategies and in setting priorities and not in implementing solutions. It is vital that the management of climate risk gets integrated into development policies and practices, including local, sectoral and national decision making. Climate change needs to be considered within the broader context of environment and social development, including
poverty, unemployment, biodiversity, urbanisation, migration, pollution, habitat fragmentation, desertification etc.

The climate crisis faced by the world requires urgent action, and in that the global emissions will need to peak within the next ten years, followed by drastic decline in the subsequent three or four decades, if the warming of earth is to be contained to less than 2-3 degrees by the middle of the century. The post Kyoto Framework will need to provide the developing countries with sufficient incentives to stimulate low carbon/green path of economic development, which permits them to address poverty and core development issues, while at the same time, helping in the reduction of Green House Gases (GHGs).

The Cancun Agreements, hailed as much more comprehensive and inclusive than the Copenhagen Accord, have apparently restored the faith and confidence in the process followed under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (incremental and evolutionary approaches) and the prospects of a deal in the next Climate Change Summit in Durban seems to have brightened. A consensus has been reached to enhance and develop the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) and International Consultation Analysis (ICA) modalities and processes for all countries, apart from agreement on tracking adequacy of global mitigation efforts. The Cancun negotiations also witnessed a radical shift in India’s stand in conceding that the developing countries too should be curbing their emissions (binding commitments in appropriate legal form). Also in the Cancun agreements, a positive shift in discourse is discernible, from the focus on cost/burden sharing to opportunities, which provides a clear signal that the rhetoric in international climate action is beginning to change towards a more positive direction as compared to traditional United Nations Framework Convention on Climage Change (UNFCCC) approaches based on responsibility and burden sharing.

At the national level, it should be a matter of great satisfaction that the government has committed, both on adaptation as well as on mitigation fronts that the national actions in India will proceed with renewed vigour and momentum, irrespective of political posturing at the international negotiations. Developments, such as international commitments made last year of reducing energy intensity, bringing in domestic mechanisms, such as Perform, Achieve, Trade (PAT) - a national energy-efficiency trading mechanism and the Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) show that energy efficiency and renewable energy production are of high priorities to the Government.