Indian PM Modi arrives in UK for three day visit

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India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has arrived in the UK for a three day visit as a guest of his British counterpart, David Cameron.

The first day of the visit will be marked by a Red Arrows flypast before Mr Modi makes a speech to Parliament.

Also during the trip, he will meet the Queen, visit a statue of Mahatma Gandhi and address crowds at Wembley Stadium.

Mr Cameron said the visit marked "a historic opportunity" for Britain and India to help each other prosper.

"It's an opportunity for two countries, tied by history, people and values, to work together to overcome the biggest challenges of our age," Mr Cameron said.

"Prime Minister Modi and I intend to grab that opportunity with both hands."

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Image captionMr Modi was greeted at Heathrow by ministers Hugo Swire and Priti Patel

Mr Modi said the aim of the visit was to strengthen "co-operation with a traditional friend".

On arrival, he tweeted: "Reached London. India-UK ties will receive a great impetus. Will attend a wide range of programmes in UK."

BBC News correspondent Christian Fraser said India's growing economy was "crucially important to British industry and trade".

"We're told that around £10bn worth of trade deals will be signed over the course of the next two days," he added.

Indian businesses in the UK

110,000

people are employed by Indian companies operating in the UK

• 13 Indian companies each employ more than 1,000 people in the UK
• 65,000 people work for Tata Group, which owns 5 of those 13 companies
• 28,000 of those work for Tata Motors, which owns Jaguar Land Rover

Source: Grant Thornton India Tracker 2015

Downing Street protests

The visit comes at an unsettled time in India, where Mr Modi's Hindu-nationalist party lost a recent regional election.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered the defeat in the northern Indian state of Bihar, amid concerns over a rise in religious intolerance in India.

His supporters will hope his visit will help him spring back from that defeat.

But protests are planned outside Downing Street with opponents dressing all in white, the colour of mourning in India.

Campaigners from the UK-based Awaaz Network say they are against Mr Modi's "violent authoritarian agenda that seeks to undermine India's democratic and secular fabric".

Dozens of writers have signed a letter to Mr Cameron, asking him to urge Mr Modi to "provide better protection for writers, artists and other critical voices and ensure that freedom of speech is safeguarded" in India.

Analysis

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By Justin Rowlatt, BBC South Asia correspondent

Mr Modi sells himself as a no-nonsense technocrat who transformed his home state, Gujarat, into an economic powerhouse.

He won a landslide a year and a half ago on the promise that he would do the same for the entire country.

He has suffered some setbacks. Many of his reforms have been blocked in parliament but India is still a formidable economic force, growing at some 7% a year.

Mr Cameron told Mr Modi last year that "relations with India are at the top of the priorities of UK's foreign policy".

And he has put in the air miles to prove he is serious, visiting India three times since he came to power.

Asked about criticism of Mr Modi, Lord Bilimoria, a cross-bench peer who chairs the UK India Business Council, said current changes in India were a "very positive story".

He said Mr Modi faced "huge challenges" and he must bring about "inclusive growth" to succeed.

'Massive market opportunities'

Kilbinder Dosanjh, a specialist on India's political economy at the Eurasia Group, said the UK was seen as "quite secondary" among the countries India wanted to build ties with.

He said Mr Modi wanted expertise from Japan and Germany to build infrastructure including roads and railways, and France had also been building a relationship with India.

But he said India's rapidly growing middle class provided "massive market opportunities" for the UK.

Mr Modi's arrival in London will be marked with a flypast by the RAF's aerobatic team, the Red Arrows, over the House of Commons.

During the visit, Mr Modi will stay at Chequers, Mr Cameron's official country retreat in Buckinghamshire.

On Friday, Mr Modi will speak, mainly in Hindi, to some 60,000 people due at the Wembley event, which is expected to be a celebration of the Indian diaspora's contribution to the British economy.

Organisers have promised an Olympic-style reception for the Indian prime minister.

He will also visit the statue of Indian statesman Mahatma Gandhi, which stands alongside those of British prime ministers Benjamin Disraeli and Sir Winston Churchill in London's Parliament Square.

Greenpeace says its charitable registration to operate in India has been revoked.

Greenpeace says its charitable registration to operate in India has been revoked.

 

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionThe organisation plans to challenge the decision in court

Greenpeace says its charitable registration to operate in India has been revoked.

The environmental campaign group says that the decision effectively shuts it down in India.

The government of Narendra Modi has previously accused Greenpeace of flouting tax laws and having an anti-development agenda.

The pressure group has been working in India for 14 years and employs more than 300 people.

The BBC's correspondent in Delhi, Justin Rowlatt, says Mr Modi's government has been accused of a major crackdown on NGOs and charitable groups ever since he came to power in 2014.

Greenpeace says it plans to challenge this latest decision. It follows a ruling that the organisation could not raise money abroad - which was itself successfully challenged.

Interim Executive Director Vinuta Gopal said in a statement:

"We are confident that we are on strong legal ground. We have faith in the legal process and are confident of overcoming this order."

Indian government ordered to unfreeze Greenpeace funds

• 20 January 2015
 
• From the sectionIndia

Image captionIndia's intelligence service has accused Greenpeace of running campaigns that hurt Indian business

An Indian court has ordered the government to release thousands of dollars in funds belonging to the environmental pressure group Greenpeace.

The funds, which had been sent from abroad, were frozen amid accusations that campaign groups were hurting India's economy.

The money, totalling more than $272,000 (£179,000), was frozen in June 2014.

Greenpeace has called the ruling a victory of democracy and free speech.

Greenpeace India said the government had "arbitrarily barred" it from receiving foreign funds from Greenpeace International and Climate Works Foundation in June 2014.

This is a strong signal from the judiciary that the government must cease its campaign of harassment of civil society

Samit Aich, Executive director of Greenpeace India

The Delhi High Court directed the home ministry to unblock the funds in September 2014 but Greenpeace India said it did not receive the money.

Tuesday's ruling means the funds will be released with immediate effect, the group said.

"This is a vindication of our work and the role that credible NGOs (non-governmental organisations) play in support of India's development," Samit Aich, Greenpeace India's executive director, said in a statement.

"This is a strong signal from the judiciary that the government must cease its campaign of harassment of civil society" he said.

Doubts continue

India's government can appeal against the decision in a higher court.

The BBC's correspondent in Mumbai, Yogita Limaye, says Tuesday's ruling only pertains to the specific funds frozen in June and does not affect the order the government has in place to prevent Greenpeace and some other NGOs from getting other funds from abroad without the clearance of the Ministry of Home Affairs.

The order came after an Indian intelligence report last year accused several campaign groups of stalling development projects by carrying out protests against their environmental impact.

UN: Climate plans must go further to prevent dangerous warming

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Image captionCarbon emissions will be "significantly dented" according to the UN, if all the plans are put into action

The UN has released its assessment of national plans to limit climate change, submitted by 146 countries.

Officials say the submissions, in their current form, won't keep global temperatures from rising by more than the 2C danger threshold.

The global total of carbon emissions will continue to grow, although more slowly than over the past two decades.

However the UN report says the plans are a major step forward and the 2C goal is still "within reach".

The UN believes that these national climate plans, called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) will form the cornerstone of a binding, global treaty on climate change that will be agreed at a conference in Paris in December.

Even much smaller countries like Ethiopia, Bhutan and Costa Rica are identifying absolute limits on the quantity of emissions. I think that signals a real evolution

Taryn Fransen, World Resources Institute

According to the UN, the submissions now cover around 86% of global emissions: about four times the amount covered by the Kyoto Protocol, the world's first carbon cutting treaty.

Their assessment is decidedly upbeat about the plans, despite acknowledging that taken together they point to rises in global temperatures of 2.7C above the pre-industrial level.

Scientists have determined that if temperature rises exceed 2C, this will lead to significant and dangerous climate impacts, which will especially hit the world's poor.

UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres, said the plans were an excellent first step: "The INDCs have the capability of limiting the forecast temperature rise to around 2.7C by 2100, by no means enough but a lot lower than the estimated four, five, or more degrees of warming projected by many prior to the INDCs."

Observers say the 2.7C figure is a substantial improvement on 3.1C, which was the estimate when the plans were assessed last December.

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UN climate conference 30 Nov - 11 Dec 2015

COP 21 - the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties - will see more than 190 nations gather in Paris to discuss a possible new global agreement on climate change, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the threat of dangerous warming due to human activities.

Explained: What is climate change?

In video: Why does the Paris conference matter?

Analysis: Latest from BBC environment correspondent Matt McGrath

More: BBC News climate change special report

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A key finding of the UN reports is that the INDCs will bring down per capita emissions by 9% by 2030.

But while the rate of growth in CO2 may be declining, the overall amount of carbon in the atmosphere will continue to grow significantly over the next 15 years.

Compared to 2010 levels, the UN says that overall emissions could be up to 22% higher in 2030. The assessment says that, as they stand, the plans won't achieve the goal of peaking global emissions and then reducing them rapidly.

Another concern is that 25% of the total range of emissions reductions are conditional upon financial support from richer countries.

Despite these issues, the fact that so many countries, rich and poor, have submitted plans to cut carbon is giving environmental campaigners great hope that a new deal is imminent.

"The vast majority of the INDCs this time around, 105 of them, contain concrete greenhouse gas mitigation targets. That's in contrast to 27 for Copenhagen," said Taryn Fransen from the World Resources Institute, referring to the failed conference in the Danish capital in 2009.

"You have quite a few more countries that are now specifying absolute decreases in emissions levels. You have countries like China, South Africa and Singapore talking about peaking emissions through a hard cap.

"Even much smaller countries like Ethiopia, Bhutan and Costa Rica are identifying absolute limits on the quantity of emissions. I think that signals a real evolution."

The challenge for the UN is now to take these intentions and turn them into a coherent and legally binding deal when heads of government and negotiators meet in Paris in a month.

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Analysis: David Shukman - BBC Science Editor

Image copyrightGetty Images

Image captionUN climate chief Christiana Figueres remains upbeat that a strong deal can be achieved in Paris

An "unprecedented engagement", says Christiana Figueres, the head of the UN's climate change negotiations. And if one thinks back to the irritable, dysfunctional days of the Copenhagen summit in 2009, the last big push for an international response to global warming, there has been a remarkable turnaround.

In the aftermath of that failed gathering, it seemed almost inconceivable that within a matter of years new momentum would be returned to what has generally been a faltering process.

It's worth bearing in mind that the national pledges to take action are of course entirely voluntary.

When the idea of individual submissions was first agreed, it was perfectly possible that many, if not most, of the world's 196 countries would choose to turn a blind eye, or plead some other pressing distraction, or argue that cutting greenhouse gases is a task to be faced by others.

Instead, an impressive 86% of global emissions are covered if you add up the total of all the different pledges.

Will it ultimately make any difference?

The numbers don't add up to what the scientists say is needed to avoid the worst of global warming. Emissions will still keep rising, albeit at a slower pace.

And the promises are just that - promises. Who knows how many governments will turn them into law and take them seriously? How many will refuse to act until the right finance is offered?

The outcome of all this is uncertain and much depends on the exact deal thrashed out at the approaching summit in Paris.

Copenhagen may well haunt the talks. But compared to where this process stood six years ago, there's a world of difference.

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Even though the plans don't add up to enough of a cut to avoid a 2C rise, campaigners believe that a strong review mechanism can - and must - be put in place by the Paris agreement.

"Paris will not be the end of the world's efforts to tackle climate change, but it might be the end of the beginning," said Mohammed Adow from Christian Aid.

"Going forward we will need a five-year review mechanism that will track how countries are doing and push them to do more as technology advances and more finance becomes available."

Getting all that into a Paris deal won't be easy. In fact the emissions pledges are the most straightforward aspect.

In fact, the negotiators now have a draft document that runs to 50 dense pages.

In the words of one delegate at a recent negotiating session, even the world's best paid lawyer would be hard pressed to understand it.

Follow Matt on Twitter: @mattmcgrathbbc

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