After actively involving itself in drawing up an Action Agenda on Sustainable Agriculture during the recent climate summit in Glasgow, India opted not to ratify it. The decision seems odd, especially because India is one of those countries that need such an agenda the most. New Delhi’s explanation that the country already has a National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture as part of its broad National Action Plan on Climate Change does not cut much ice. This Mission’s track record is quite uninspiring. The country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the farm sector, instead of abating, have continued to soar. India overtook China in 2011 to become the world’s top polluter in terms of agricultural emissions. Its farm sector GHGs are now 7 per cent higher than China’s and 30 per cent above those of Brazil. Worse still, the pace of the annual spike in these discharges has accelerated from 0.5 per cent in 2016 to 0.83 per cent in 2017 and 1.3 per cent
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