The United Nations Under-Secretary-General Erik Solheim has appreciated India's move in ratifying the Paris Agreement on Climate Change as "A Brave Move".

Mr. Solheim, who is also the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said that the initiative taken by Prime Minister Narandra Modi has now brought together India along with China, the United States, European Union and others into the leadership of the battle against Climate Change.

India ratified the agreement on Oct. 2, which is celebrated as Gandhi Jayanti.

Talking to Nepali Journalist after addressing the ministerial session of the ongoing World Sustainable Development Summit (WSDS) in New Delhi, he said he appreciated India's broad initiative to clean up the Ganga river, one of the most polluted rivers in the world.

In addition, he emphasised that maintaining the temperature on the Himalayas of the entire region is a matter of "life and death." Almost the big rivers, The Ganges, Yamuna and Brahmaputra all come from the Himalayas, so do the rivers in China and if they cannot flow because of the melting of the glaciers, that will have dramatic effect on agriculture productivity to the area alongside of these rivers, he warned.

The World Sustainable Development Summit has brought world leaders, policy makers, environmental activists and academics to New Delhi on a single platform for four days. Indian President Pranab Mukherjee Inaugurated the summit on Wednesday.