New Delhi: India needs a national strategy to adapt to climate change and to enhance the ecological sustainability of its development path, says its National Action Plan on Climate Change. The plan was released by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here Monday.

"With an economy closely tied to its natural resource base and climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, water and forestry, India may face a major threat because of the projected changes in climate," says the long-awaited plan, which is now up for public debate.

The plan, prepared by the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change after deliberations that went on for around a year, recognises that India has wider choices in its developmental pathway "precisely because it is at an early stage of development".

The plan promises that India "will engage actively in multilateral negotiations in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in a positive, constructive and forward-looking manner".

But in the as-expected absence of any binding commitment on India's part to mitigate its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the fractious debate between industrialised and developing countries on how to combat climate change is likely to get more shrill.

GHG emissions, mainly of carbon dioxide, are leading to global warming, which is already showing its effects through reduced farm productivity, more frequent and more damaging droughts, floods and storms, glacier retreat, sea level rise, coral die-out and melting of polar ice. The tropics and sub-tropics are bearing the brunt.