India's new national Council on Climate Change met for the first time on Friday, marking the country's first step towards assessing and controlling its global warming-related greenhouse gas emissions.

Here are five facts on India and climate change.

* India is the world's fourth biggest greenhouse gas emitter and produces about 4 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. The 1,884 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent it emitted in 2000 rank after the US (6,928), China (4,938) and Russia (1,952).

* Emissions are said to be growing by 2 to 3 percent annually. Its 2000 emissions were 41 percent higher than its 1990 emissions, according to the World Resources Institute. The main contributor is the energy sector, which the government wants to grow significantly by 2012, to link up the half a billion people living without electricity.

* Per capita emissions are small. At around a tonne per person per year in 1998, they were a quarter of the global average of 4 tonnes per year, and way below the US's 20 tonnes.

* India ratified the world's only global agreement on emissions reductions, the Kyoto Protocol, in August 2002. As a developing country it is not required to set the specific reductions targets required for developed countries.

* Rising temperatures could provoke more frequent floods and droughts, spur disease and increase water scarcity in India because of the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. By 2030, glaciers could shrink from 500,000 sq km to 100,000 sq km if current rates of warming continue, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in April.

Sources: Reuters, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), World Resources Institute, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

(Planet Ark, 16/07/2007)