Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
Related Articles
Syllabus: Green economy
India’s experience has shown that climate action is only effective and embraced at scale if it aligns with the development aspirations of millions and contributes to economic growth.
- The green economy paradigm provides an optimistic pathway to align development and environmental outcomes.
- Example:
- building a solar park or an electric vehicle charging station expands infrastructure while furthering climate action.
- Reviving millets helps improve farm incomes while making our agriculture climate resilient.
Initiatives in the hinterlands
- Various initiatives to spread green economy approach to the hinterlands of India by enabling access to cleantech solutions for livelihoods among the rural population.
- solar dryers converting throwaway tomatoes into sun-dried ones in Andhra Pradesh
- biomass-powered cold storages in Maharashtra
- solar silk reeling machines instead of thigh-reelers in Odisha
Advantages of cleantech solutions
- powered by renewable energy
- help India reduce its diesel imports
- avoid the loss of perishable food
- enhance rural livelihood opportunities
- an investment opportunity worth $50 billion for investors and financiers.
Steps to scale up
- leverage existing government programmes supporting livelihoods such as the Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Formalisation of Micro food processing Enterprises (PM-FME) scheme, Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana and the proper utilization of Agriculture Infrastructure Fund.
- enable large-scale financing of cleantech solutions.
- It requires supporting bankers’ capacity on credit assessment
- We also need to hedge their risks in the initial stages of the market through partial guarantees.
- Active engagement with financiers is important to structure loan products that are aligned with the cash flow scenarios of users.
- enable multi-actor partnerships between technology innovators, manufacturers, distributors and service providers, financiers, and market-linkage players to enable an overall ecosystem.
- Challenges include low product awareness, high customer acquisition cost as users need to touch and feel these products before adoption, and low density of customers for such products in a given area. Users too, at times, struggle with limited after-sales service and market linkage of the final processed products.
India has massive ambitions for a clean and green future. Cleantech can deliver on development and climate action in the country’s rural areas.
