This article outlines the National Solar Mission's role as India's major climate change mitigation policy, arguing that India's National Solar Mission (NSM) was initially conceived to bolster India's position against legally binding commitments on carbon emissions. However, the NSM also has twin objectives in energy security. Progress in the NSM is outlined before its problems are examined in order to clarify how the Indian government may direct its development to fulfil energy security and energy access goals.

It is now commonly accepted that small island countries are facing an existential threat because of global warming and the consequent rise in the level of the oceans.

With the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expiring in 2012, time seems to be running out for a new successor agreement. The Protocol remains the most comprehensive attempt to negotiate binding limits on anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The long-term challenge, defined by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is to stabilise GHG concentration in the atmosphere at levels that would prevent interference with the climate system. There are, however, economic and social realities that drive anthropogenic GHG emissions.

Both the Chinese government and the Tibetans are in agreement over the impending issues relating to the adverse impact of climate change on Tibet while the India-specific data on glacier melt is as yet inconclusive. There is, however, a difference of perception in Sino-Tibetan discourse over the capitalist model of economic development being undertaken by China which is at variance with the cultural practices of Tibetans, informed and regulated as they are with the Buddhist values of oneness with nature. Nomadism is also fundamental to the preservation of the ecology of Tibet.