LAST UPDATED: APR/2026. Five months after COP30, India submitted its new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), with targets for 2035.

The new NDC incorporates aspects of India's development vision and links climate action to the national Viksit Bharat @2047 project, which aims to transform the country into a developed nation by the centenary of its independence, in 2047. This is presented as the NDC's first goal. To achieve this economic development objective, India commits to adopting a "cleaner" trajectory aligned with climate action. The country also seeks to build capacity, create national frameworks, and contribute to building an international architecture that promotes the rapid dissemination of cutting-edge climate technologies in India.

The Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE) Mission, presented by India at COP26 in 2021 and incorporated into an Indian NDC for the first time in 2022, is also retained and strengthened in the new document. The 2026 NDC incorporates LiFE as one of its formal targets, aiming to encourage the adoption of sustainable lifestyles in India and internationally. In the new NDC, the initiative is presented as a "fundamental element for addressing climate change."

India's NDC also emphasizes adaptation and the mobilization of climate finance for developing countries, drawing attention to the current resource gap. The document mentions both the mobilization of domestic financial resources and the need for climate finance from developed countries. It further stresses that "increased ambition, especially for developing countries like India, is closely tied to the effective provision of means of implementation, including predictable, adequate and accessible climate finance."

India's new NDC modestly expands the mitigation targets set out in the previous NDC, presented in 2022. For 2035, the country commits to reducing the emissions intensity of its GDP by 47% relative to 2005 levels, compared with the previous target of a 45% reduction by 2030.

The new NDC also raises the target for the share of non-fossil sources in installed electricity generation capacity, from about 50% by 2030 to 60% by 2035.

In the land use and forestry sector, India likewise expands its commitment to increasing carbon sinks. The new NDC sets a target of creating an additional sink of between 3.5 and 4 billion tonnes of CO₂e by 2035, compared with the previous target of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO₂e by 2030.

The Climate Action Tracker (CAT, 2026) assessment classified the NDC as "Highly Insufficient." This means that if all countries adopted targets with the same level of ambition, global warming could reach nearly 4°C by the end of the century.

According to CAT’s evaluation, India is likely to reach, by 2030 or even earlier, the target set for 2035 of raising the share of non-fossil sources in its installed electricity generation capacity to 60%, a target that therefore represents no real progress relative to the trajectory already under way. The same applies to the emissions-intensity reduction target: because it is calculated relative to GDP rather than as an absolute volume of emissions, it can be met even if the country's total emissions continue to grow as the economy expands. According to the CAT, this is precisely what is expected to happen: even if the unconditional target is met, India's emissions could rise to around 6.3 GtCO₂e in 2035, 64% above 2023 levels, far from the pathway required for 1.5°C alignment, which would require stabilizing emissions below 2009 levels. As a result, the so-called "ambition gap" (the difference between the conditional target and the 1.5°C-compatible pathway) practically doubles between the two cycles, from 1.9 GtCO₂e in 2030 to 3.9 GtCO₂e in 2035. In other words, instead of moving closer to the Paris goal, India is moving further away from it.

Beyond the lack of ambition, the CAT also criticizes the low level of detail and structural robustness of the targets. The NDC does not set specific emissions reduction obligations for individual sectors, such as energy, industry and transport, nor does it include an absolute emissions target, a commitment to peak emissions before 2035, or a planned pathway for reducing fossil fuel use, with no mention at all of ending coal exploration, production or power generation. For comparison, the CAT estimates that aligning India's power sector with a 1.5°C pathway would require renewables to account for 74% to 82% of electricity generation by 2035 (with wind and solar alone contributing 56% to 64%), a level far above what the current installed capacity target guarantees.

As the world's third-largest emitter, India is under pressure to scale up its efforts and make a more robust contribution to tackling global warming. On the other hand, it remains a developing country, with a large and growing population, an expanding economy, and ever-increasing energy demand. This context helps explain why a significant part of its climate action depends on international support, especially low-cost financing and technology transfer. India's own NDC acknowledges that, to date, most climate policies have been financed with domestic resources and that scaling up these actions will require new investment. In addition, the impasse in climate finance negotiations under the UNFCCC, especially around the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG), has left the country frustrated and with limited prospects for international financial support to meet its targets (Observatório do Clima, 2024; Greenpeace India, 2025).

India presented its Long-Term Low-Carbon Development Strategy (LT-LEDS) in 2022. The 121-page document first reinforces India's stance that the country contributes minimally to global warming, being a developing country with low per capita emissions (despite currently being the world's 3rd largest emitter).

This is the first document submitted by the country to the UNFCCC to include the target of achieving net-zero emissions by 2070. This commitment was first announced in 2021, during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech at COP26 in Glasgow. In the LT-LEDS, India describes specific sector-by-sector areas of action, targeting mainly the energy, industry, transport, buildings and cities sectors. Agriculture is not included among the long-term strategy's sectors, due to its predominantly adaptation-related nature, particularly because most Indian farmers operate small- or medium-scale production.

Another point to note is that, in the Indian context, "transition" refers to low-carbon development, not strictly to decarbonization. The official discourse emphasizes the rational use of fossil resources, taking into account development needs and energy security, and stresses that "India's emissions will have to grow in line with rising demand for energy and development," this being the path toward achieving the 2070 neutrality target.

The Climate Action Tracker (CAT, 2025) rates the country's carbon neutrality target as "poor." According to the analysis, there is a lack of clear guidance on how the government intends to achieve net-zero emissions beyond existing policies.

The Indian document does not project emissions trajectories or show how the proposed measures will lead to the necessary reductions by 2070. It also does not clarify whether the target covers only CO₂ or all greenhouse gases, nor does it detail the role of carbon capture and removal technologies. In addition, coal continues to hold significant space in the long-term energy strategy.

For the CAT, there are weaknesses in the scope, structure and transparency of the target, with ample room for improvement, especially in defining the scope of emissions covered, quantifying measures, and detailing the pathways to reach neutrality.