India accounts for about five percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, roughly a quarter of the emissions of China and the United States, according to an Indian government study reported by Reuters.
India has now overtaken Japan to become the world’s number four emitter, in terms of emissions from industrial activities. India’s emissions are growing at twice the global average rate, increasing 125 percent between 1990 and 2008. More than 60 percent of emissions in India come from the energy sector. Forests are estimated to absorb 11 percent of emissions.
India’s per capita emissions are only one-twentieth of the United States.
India is opposing hard limits on greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the December U.N. climate meeting to lay out the successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
