Introduction:
India has always regarded climate change as a diplomatic issue, stressing that the developed world, given its disproportionate involvement in producing the problem, should lead the way in decreasing emissions and providing the poor world with the necessary funding and technology. While this strategy is perfectly justified and has served India well in the past, there are strong reasons for India to reconsider its approach to international and local climate policy. First, climate change is projected to have deep and disastrous effects in India, making development and poverty eradication much more difficult. Second, India may adopt several low-cost initiatives that will benefit both its growth and the environment. Rethinking our strategy would imply joining, if not leading, a worldwide ‘coalition of the willing’ that argues for an ambitious and powerful rules-based global climate system. Domestically, it would include a proactive pursuit of lower-carbon growth options that promote development, as well as investments in climate adaptation and resilience. However, rethinking our approach at the international and domestic levels necessitates the establishment of effective climate governance structures.
Following a brief background establishing section, this paper lays out parts of a strategy for international and local climate policy that is likely to benefit India in the long run.
Context
Climate change dubbed the “defining challenge of our time,” is expected to have far-reaching “impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and throughout the oceans.”[1]These effects are projected to devastate India, a nation with 7500 km of coastline, enormous expanses of low-lying areas, high population density, weak infrastructure, and persistent reliance on agriculture for a living. Himalayan glaciers have begun to recede as a result of the 1°C warming that has already happened since pre-industrial times, and there has been a significant rise in the frequency and intensity of heat waves,[2] droughts, intense rainfall events[3], and floods. If the world warms to between 2.6°C and 3.2°C, as the UN climate secretariat predicts based on current country pledges, India will suffer serious, pervasive, and irreversible consequences – not just in terms of impacts on people and ecosystems, but also on economic growth, livelihoods, and wellbeing. Climate change, for example, is expected to cut agricultural revenue in India by 15-25 per cent by the end of the century.[4]
International Climate Policy
India’s stance in international climate discussions is embedded in bigger geopolitical trends that feed and impact its broader foreign and energy policies. With the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, Brazilian President Bolsonaro’s equivocation on it, and the defeat of Australia’s Labor Party, which favoured tough climate policies, the impetus that led to the Paris Agreement has begun to wane. In global climate politics, there is a leadership and imagination void that India might fill.
For example, India might approach China, which has long been its bargaining partner in preserving differentiated responsibilities, to form a mutually advantageous coalition on the global solar energy transition. India leads the International Solar Alliance and has a sizable market, but China is a technological powerhouse in solar panels and storage technology. Both nations are members of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank. As Africa’s infrastructure grows, an India-China partnership might assist give a vision of, as well as the technology and financial means to realise, a low-carbon yet cost-effective future. Furthermore, and in keeping with this strategy, India might endeavour to achieve its potential as a leader of vulnerable nations. This will also be welcomed in South Asia by vulnerable nations such as Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal. Notably, these policies allow India to be a climate leader while still pursuing chances for economic and political benefit; that is, they do not force the country to forgo economic and political gain to pursue climate policy.
Based on these measures, India may join forces with others to establish a “coalition of the willing” in global climate politics. At this point in the discussions, such a coalition is very important. The highly heated talks on obligations, regulations, and institutions concluded in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018, and the regime has moved gears to the day-to-day business of implementation. The Paris Agreement is based on nations’ nationally determined contributions (or NDCs) to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, which are supplemented by a normative expectation of progress and ‘highest feasible ambition,’ which demands these contributions to be enhanced over time.[5] The phrases “progression” and “maximum feasible ambition” are not defined in the Paris Agreement or its Rulebook. Furthermore, while the Rulebook fleshes out informational requirements and operationalizes an enhanced transparency framework, global stocktake, and implementation and compliance mechanism, it retains considerable flexibility, autonomy, and discretion for states out of political necessity; this is especially evident in their near-absolute control over the content of their NDC.[6] States could choose to exploit this discretion and create a political and implementation stumbling block, or they could choose to gradually strengthen their NDCs, improve the quality of the ex-ante and ex-post information they provide, and initiate a virtuous cycle of ever more ambitious actions required to meet the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal. It is in India’s best interests to join the “coalition of the willing” – states that strive to gradually strengthen their NDCs and improve their capacity to achieve both the procedural criteria of the Paris Agreement and its Rulebook, as well as the substantive goal of the climate change regime.
First and foremost, India should publish information about its NDC in the context of its greater development ambitions and resource limitations.[7]This report should include the planning steps that the nation has undertaken to achieve its NDC, which should include significant stakeholder discussions and consideration of the human rights consequences of climate change action or inactivity.
Second, India should explicitly explain how its NDC is fair and aspirational, as well as the objective standards and benchmarks that it is based on. This method would enable India to consider how these criteria and standards may be applied to the NDCs of other nations, transforming its long-held emphasis on the idea of justice in climate change discussions into a practical and implemented policy. India may bring into the global evaluation of progress metrics and benchmarks that assess ‘relative fair sharing’ by presenting robust information in the context of its NDC.
Third, in terms of ex-post tracking of progress in implementing its NDC,[8] India should identify objective defensible indicators to assess its progress with its NDC, take proactive steps to address capacity gaps in implementation and reporting, and gradually improve the quality, precision, and detail of the information it provides. India’s implementation should show a high level of ‘due diligence’ (best feasible efforts) in attaining the NDC’s objectives.
Finally, in respect to the global stocktake process that occurs every five years,[9] India should collaborate with negotiating partners (such as South Africa) and vulnerable states to ensure that the ‘hooks’ on equity in the Paris Agreement and the Rulebook are properly used. India should present its idea of equitable burden-sharing and “relative fair shares” to enable a meaningful, albeit collective, evaluation of progress toward the global temperature objective at the international level.
India’s potential to take the lead in this “coalition of the willing” would necessitate a significant increase in the capability and resources — human, financial, legal, research, and institutional – it devotes to international negotiations and related backchannel operations.[10]The country’s delegations to the climate talks are far smaller than others of comparable size and status. The delegations’ membership tends to favour bureaucrats over academics, and there are few institutional routes for national perspectives to be informed by results from India’s increasing research community working in these fields. In reconsidering our approach to climate policy, both local and international, India must also reconsider its interaction with experts, as well as the methods for doing so.
Given its hybrid design, the quality of the NDCs submitted by countries ultimately determines the success of the Paris Agreement. In turn, the strength of the NDCs will be determined by international mechanisms that can catalyse more ambitious domestic initiatives, as well as domestic political will and institutional capability for developing and executing ambitious NDCs. We now turn our attention to domestic issues.
Domestic Climate Policy
As the reality of climate change approaches and its consequences become more tangible, India, like other countries, must increasingly consider climate change as a developmental problem, rather than only a diplomatic one. Simply put, climate change will make development objectives more difficult to achieve. Global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, for example, and the introduction of new technologies will make it more difficult for India to power its industry and deliver electricity to its inhabitants in traditional methods. Agriculture, on which a sizable segment of the population still depends for a living, may especially be heavily impacted. Climate-related catastrophes may cause disruptions to cities and coasts. Water cycles may be interrupted, and the time and availability of water through rainfall and rivers in India may change. Furthermore, heatwaves and changing disease vectors will exacerbate the issue of maintaining public health. Climate change is not a one-off problem that must be addressed by a single branch of government; it is a problem that necessitates the integration of climate considerations into all branches of government decision-making.
As this debate has demonstrated, the institutional needs for controlling climate change are significant. In recent years, India has begun to plan for climate change, including the development of a National Action Plan, eight national missions focused on adaptation and mitigation, 32 state action plans, and increased investment in scientific infrastructure. However, a closer look into these initiatives reveals that each of these sectors’ research and analytical ability is missing, coordination is restricted, implementation is spotty across different efforts, and strategic thinking for really revolutionary ideas is lacking.[11]
Building Indian states’ capacity to confront the complex concerns of climate change is still in its early stages. The country must go much further down this path, developing and implementing a strong institutional structure capable of generating appropriate knowledge, designing policy and infrastructure interventions, coordinating across sectoral line departments and governance scales, ensuring accountability for implementation and serving as a conduit for business and civil society groups. India’s top objective is development. However, a development that is unaffected by climate change is no longer feasible. The difficulty of creating appropriate state capacity in India is exacerbated by the need to address climate change. India in a Warming World, an upcoming edited volume organised by the Centre for Policy Research, investigates how India may genuinely incorporate climate concerns in both its energy consumption and natural resource sectors to address climate mitigation and adaptation.
Mitigation
Mitigation of climate change, or the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, has long been linked to India’s global bargaining position. Why should India pursue costly mitigation measures if wealthier nations, not India, are mostly to blame for the problem? A decade ago, the National Action Plan on Climate Change advocated investigating activities that would help both development and the environment. Since then, this notion of ‘co-benefits has guided our efforts, although acts that satisfy this principle have not been pursued and developed fully. In this regard, India’s status as a late developer is advantageous: we have not yet committed to energy production and consumption patterns, so we may make use of new technology and knowledge to establish a lower-carbon growth path.
The cities of India are an especially good example.[12] The country is quickly urbanising, yet most of urban India has yet to be developed. The next few decades provide an opportunity to build cities with lower transportation needs (and thus lower emissions but also congestion) as a result of smart planning that places work and living spaces close to each other; the remaining travel needs are increasingly met by high-quality public transportation and walking (rather than private automobiles), and new buildings are designed to require less cooling and heating through intelligent design. Planning methods for urban places must be centred on the numerous objectives that a city must satisfy in current times – liability, low congestion, efficient operation, and a minimal environmental imprint.
Another interesting illustration is India’s power grid.[13] Long plagued by issues of unreliability, poor service, and loss-making, Indian energy is expected to be rattled by the recent rapid drop in renewable electricity costs to levels competitive with coal power. However, the transition is likely to be difficult, with victors and losers. For example, the industry may decide to switch to renewables, putting a financial strain on distribution corporations. Coal-mining regions may have to shift to new sectors over time.[14]
Notably, these changes are unavoidable and are being driven by global technological trends rather than solely by national climate measures. Tata Power is the most recent example of a corporation aiming to transition from coal to solar for economic reasons.[15] However, planning for this future under the guise of a low-carbon economy might help unleash potential synergies between green power, energy access, and energy security. Failure to plan for this shift, on the other hand, maybe expensive, particularly for the poor. Furthermore, the possibility of green, yet competitive, power opens the door to electrifying other industries, such as transportation and cooking. However, the obstacles associated with managing these changes, in terms of the necessary hardware, institutional regulations, and ensuring prospective losers are not left behind, are significant and necessitate quick study and preparation.
Cities and the electrical industry in India are only two examples. Mitigation also includes mentioning a few, transportation networks (including freight), industry, agriculture, forest management and usage, and food consumption patterns. A consistent strategy based on understanding the synergies and trade-offs across diverse development objectives and climate mitigation must become part of India’s policy framework across these sectors.
Adaptation
Despite our best efforts, governments are unlikely to mitigate sufficiently to avert at least some – possibly substantial – impacts of climate change.[16] India, maybe more than any other country, must focus on the adaptability and resilience of its economy and society.
This is as difficult as, if not more difficult than, lowering greenhouse gas emissions. For example, in agriculture, adaptation requires preparing India’s agricultural systems for heat stress and unpredictable rainfall patterns against a backdrop of existing farmer distress, a shaky price stabilisation system prone to rent-seeking, and severely inadequate insurance and risk management mechanisms available to farmers. Large existing entry points into food security and employment, such as the public distribution system and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee programme, might be rethought and repurposed in this context to provide climate resilience. In summary, the extent and scope of anticipated climate consequences necessitate systematic integration of climate issues throughout development programmes, rather than a patchwork approach.
Another example is India’s vast coastline, which is particularly sensitive to climate change.[17] Climate change is predicted to reduce fisheries production through changes in ocean temperature and acidity levels, which are already strained by non-climate influences such as fertiliser run-off, with consequences for fisher communities’ livelihoods. Because these impacts are non-linear, coastal systems may be strained beyond the point of recovery at a certain point. Furthermore, extreme weather events and sea-level rise are projected to change coastal zones, increasing the dangers and costs of coastal living. Addressing these difficulties includes, but is not limited to, catastrophe preparedness. It necessitates, for example, coordinating the activity of many agencies, some of which have a protective purpose while others strive to increase production: they must be coordinated around coastal resilience.
Aside from agriculture and coastlines, urban areas, forests, and water management all provide significant challenges. The obstacles of mainstreaming climate change are scientific, economic, social, and institutional in all of these sectors.
Conclusion
As the threat of climate change becomes apparent, it is becoming clear that pursuing growth without taking climate change into account risks neglecting a critical piece of the jigsaw. Internalizing and mainstreaming climate issues must thus be a key component of the incoming government’s strategy.
Fortunately, in terms of international policy, tackling climate change can have economic and political benefits. It has the potential to enable India to forge coalitions to become a leader in the coming global renewable energy transition. And it opens the door for the country to become a political leader, particularly of weak nations.
Domestically, there is a lot of work to be done. This entails redesigning India’s energy system in a world that values renewable energy, as well as handling the difficult issue of reconstructing India’s troubled electrical distribution industry. To handle the effects of climate change on agriculture, coastlines, cities, water, and forests, the new administration will need to invest in dedicated scientific and institutional capacity charged with internalising the climate problem and the consequences for development.
References:
[1] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ‘Summary for Policymakers’, in Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report, Contribution of Working Groups I, II, and III the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A Meyer (Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC, 2014), 6. [hereinafter IPCC]
[2] In 2015, a heat wave in India killed more than 2000 people. See Stephane Hallegatte, Adrien Vogt-Schilb, Mook Bangalore and Julie Rozenberg, ‘Unbreakable: Building the Resilience of the Poor in the Face of Natural Disasters’ (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017), 34.
[3] O. Hoegh-Guldberg, D. Jacob, M. Taylor, M. Bindi, S. Brown, I. Camilloni, A. Diedhiou, R. Djalante, K.L. Ebi, F. Engelbrecht, J. Guiot, Y. Hijioka, S. Mehrotra, A. Payne, S.I. Seneviratne, A. Thomas, R. Warren and G. Zhou, ‘Impacts of 1.5°C of Global Warming on Natural and Human Systems’, in Global Warming of 1.5°C, edited by V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H.O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor and T. Waterfield (Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC, 2018), 263.
[4] Ministry of Finance, Government of India, ‘Climate, Climate Change, and Agriculture’, in Economic Survey 2017-18 (New Delhi: Government of India, 2018), 82.
[5] Article 4(3), Paris Agreement, 2015.
[6] Lavanya Rajamani and Daniel Bodansky, ‘The Paris Rulebook: Balancing Prescriptiveness with Flexibility’, International & Comparative Law Quarterly 68 (4) (forthcoming, 2019).
[7] Article 4(8), Paris Agreement, 2015.
[8] Article 13, Paris Agreement, 2015.
[9] Article 14, Paris Agreement, 2015.
[10] See, for a full discussion of legal capacity constraints and their substantive effects on India’s negotiating position, Lavanya Rajamani, ‘India’s Approach to International Law in the Climate Change Regime’, Indian Journal of International Law 57 (1) (2017).
[11] Vijeta Rattani, ‘Coping with Climate Change: An Analysis of India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change’ (New Delhi, India: Centre for Science and Environment, 2018); Navroz K. Dubash and Neha Joseph, ‘Evolution of Institutions for Climate Policy in India’, Economic and Political Weekly 51 (3) (2016): 44-54; Sudhir Chella Rajan and Sujatha Byravan, ‘An Evaluation of India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change’ (Chennai, India: Centre for Development Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research and Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras, 2012).
[12] Radhika Khosla and Ankit Bhardwaj, ‘Urbanization in the Time of Climate Change: Examining the Response of Indian Cities’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 10 (1) (2018): e560, https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.560.
[13] Ashok Sreenivas and Ashwin Gambhir, ‘Aligning Energy, Development and Mitigation’, in India in a Warming World, ed. Navroz K. Dubash (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Navroz K. Dubash, Sunila S. Kale and Ranjit Bharvirkar, eds., Mapping Power: The Political Economy of Electricity in India’s States (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018).
[14] Navroz K. Dubash, Ashwini K. Swain and Parth Bhatia, ‘The Disruptive Politics of Renewable Energy’, The India Forum, forthcoming.
[15] Press Trust of India, ‘Tata Power to focus on clean energy, not to build new coal-fired plants: report’, The Hindu, 23 April 2019, https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/tata-power-to-focus-on-cl….
[16] IPCC, ‘Summary for Policymakers’, in Global Warming of 1.5°C, edited by V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H.O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor and T. Waterfield (Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC, 2018).
[17] Rohan Arthur, ‘Shoring Up: Climate Change and the Indian Coasts and Islands’, in India in a Warming World, ed. Navroz K. Dubash (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
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