Climate Action Not Challenge, But Opportunity For India: Amitabh Kant

New Delhi | Updated: 23 September, 2022 2:22 pm IST

Stressing that climate action is not a challenge for New Delhi, former NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Friday said that India will become the first country to be industrialized without carbonizing.

“For India, climate action is not a challenge, but an opportunity,” said Kant, who is also India’s Sherpa to G20, at the 9^th annual forum of non-profit Public Affairs Forum of India (PAFI).

The former bureaucrat said that India is blessed for a good climate and the entrepreneurial ecosystem that it has developed over the years. “And the second is that India will become the first country to be industrialized without carbonizing, only with green hydrogen,” Kant added.

Underlining his vision for making India an exporter of renewable and green energy, Kant said that India has no competition in this field, thereby opening the way for it to become a mega-producer of green energy. “If companies continued to take climate action, it would attract more capital, speeding up the growth of the nation,” he told the audience.

While talking about India’s agenda at G20, he said that India’s G20 presidency came at a time when there were multiple challenges in the world, including the Russia-Ukraine war, the China-Taiwan crisis, global supply chain disruptions, trade slowdown, high global debt, and inflationary pressures.

The former NITI Aayog CEO also said that India would bring growth at the central stage. He asserted that the reforms carried out by the government in the last five years have put India on a growth trajectory for many decades to come.

India will be the second largest country in terms of the size of its economy, he said while quoting a study by PWC.

“India needs to work in three areas – First, India should create a digital model replicable for other developing countries to follow. Second, achieve SDG by Digitization and third, call for action against climate change as per the ‘Panchamrit’, announced by our esteemed Prime Minister in Glasgow,” he opined.