Climate policy of India and its effect on India’s Foreign Policy

Climate policy of India and its effect on India’s Foreign Policy

30^th July2018, POSTED BY Santanu kr Dutta

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of this century. It is a global challenge that calls for global solutions. There is a need to think out of the box. Business, as usual, is no longer adequate. Foreign policy must do its part. The threat of climate change is not only global. It is also multidimensional, invisible, unpredictable, and transcends national borders.


First, we need to understand what is climate change exactly means. Climate change is basically a change in the pattern of the climate that lasts for a few decades to centuries. Various factors lead to the changes in the climatic conditions on the Earth. These factors are also referred to as forcing mechanisms. These mechanisms are either external or internal. Climate change is having a negative impact on the forests, wildlife, water systems as well as the polar region on the Earth. A number of species of plants and animals have gone extinct due to the changes in the climate on the Earth and several others have been affected adversely. It is important to keep a check on such activities in order to control climatic changes and ensure environmental harmony.


The Paris Agreement signed in December 2015 builds upon the Convention and for the first time brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries to do so. India is responsible for 6% of the global CO2 emissions. This would mean India will have to shift significantly from coal-based power generation to renewable energy sources. As part of the initial commitments to the agreement, India also plans to reduce its carbon emission intensity – emission per unit of GDP – by 33-35% from 2005 levels over 15 years. It aims at producing 40% of its installed electricity capacity by 2030 from non-fossil fuels.


At the international level, India is emerging as a key factor in climate negotiations, while at the national and sub-national levels, the climate policy landscape is becoming more active and more ambitious. It is essential to unravel this complex landscape if we are to understand why policy looks the way it does, and the extent to which India might contribute to a future international framework for tackling climate change as well as how international parties might cooperate with and support India’s domestic efforts. At each level of decision making in India, climate policy is embedded in wider policy concerns. In the international realm, it is being woven into a broader foreign policy strategy, while domestically, it is being shaped to serve national and sub-national development interests. While our analysis highlights some common drivers at all levels, it also finds that their influences over policy are not uniform across the different areas, and in some cases, they work in different ways at different levels of policy. We also indicate what this may mean for the likely acceptability within India of various climate policies being pushed at the international level.


Still, India increasingly sees the local impacts of climate change and growing coal use. The biggest climate impact has been on changing weather patterns in South Asia. Over the last 50 years, rising temperatures have led to a nearly 10 per cent reduction in the duration and rainfall levels of the annual monsoons that are vital to nearly all Indian agriculture. Moreover, the melting of Himalayan glaciers threatens the country’s other vital water supply. In addition, rising sea levels have put hundreds of millions of Indians at risk in low-lying population centres in the Kolkata and Chennai metropolitan regions. So Indians now take climate change more seriously. India`s foreign policy is to promote an environment of peace and stability in our region and in the world to facilitate accelerated socio-economic development and safeguard our national security. India’s foreign policy also recognizes that the issues such as climate change, energy and food security are crucial for India’s transformation. The Government shall develop friendly and cooperative relations with all our neighbours and to strengthen engagement with major powers. Our goal remains a peaceful, stable and prosperous neighbourhood that means cooperation among the nations.


As the international climate negotiations increasingly show signs of adopting a ‘bottom-up’ regime, it is becoming increasingly important to understand what factors drive or condition climate actions in different countries. This is essential in order to understand what prospects there are for different countries contributing to the international negotiations and/or taking domestic action to respond to the climate challenge. India is an increasingly influential factor in global climate negotiations. It has among the world’s lowest per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, yet is the fifth largest source of GHG globally when accounted in total tonnes. This presents a challenging dichotomy for those tasked with devising an international climate agreement that simultaneously includes the bulk of global emissions and fairly apportions responsibility for taking action. Being among the most vulnerable countries to climate impacts, India has a very real stake in negotiations reaching a meaningful outcome and a growing awareness of its own potential role in helping achieve such an outcome. Yet at home, the Indian government knows it must weigh these goals against other domestic priorities, particularly the push to achieve high levels of social and economic development including reducing poverty.


Recent years have seen a shift in India’s approach to negotiations within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as well as more advanced climate policy action in the national and sub-national areas. This trend toward a ‘multi-level governance’ situation, with a more independent sub-national dimension, makes it important to study the forces that are driving and shaping policy at each level. To understand what action to tackle climate change is politically possible and socially acceptable in India, it is necessary to look at the political economy in which decision-makers are nested.


Indian Government has pledged to invest $100 billion in clean energy over the next five years and to source 40 per cent of the country’s electricity from renewable and low-carbon sources by 2030. India has also helped establish the International Solar Alliance (ISA), a multi-country organization of sun-rich countries focused on solar technology. His most recent budget includes more than a doubling of government subsidies for solar power. During Paris agreement, our prime minister Narendra Modi pledged to illuminate 18,000 energy poor villages by 2019 through a mix of fossil fuels and renewable sources. Whether or not India can move its power grid to renewable sources fast enough to slow the pace of its natural disasters is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.


India is already on the path of the clean energy revolution and is making significant accomplishments in achieving its pledge to the Paris Agreement. As a strategy to reduce its emission, India has embarked on a massive renewable energy programme. Being the largest democracy, India is a shining example of how stronger climate actions could be successfully aligned with development imperatives. India has played a crucial role in climate negotiations during the Paris Agreement.

Ever since India achieved Independence from British rule on 15th August, 947, it has been following a policy of peaceful co-existence with its neighbour’s the rest of the world. Pt. Jawahar Lai Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India the architect of this policy.


In fact, Mr Nehru had spelt out the basic parameters of India’sforeign lice in 1946. He declared, “We propose, as far as possible, to keep away from e power politics of groups, aligned against one another, which have led in e past to world wars and which may again lead to disasters on an even vaster scale.


As regards India’s policy of supporting freedom movements, Pt. Nehru id, “We believe that peace and freedom are indivisible…. We are particularly retested in the emancipation of colonial and dependent countries and peoples, d in the recognition in theory and practice of equal opportunities for all races”.


India increasingly sees the local impacts of climate change and growing coal use. The biggest climate impact has been on changing weather patterns in South Asia. Over the last 50 years, rising temperatures have led to a nearly 10 per cent reduction in the duration and rainfall levels of the annual monsoons that are vital to nearly all Indian agriculture. Moreover, the melting of Himalayan glaciers threatens the country’s other vital water supply. In addition, rising sea levels have put hundreds of millions of Indians at risk in low-lying population centres in the Kolkata and Chennai metropolitan regions. So Indians now take climate change more seriously. India`s foreign policy is to promote an environment of peace and stability in our region and in the world to facilitate accelerated socio-economic development and safeguard our national security. India’s foreign policy also recognizes that the issues such as climate change, energy and food security are crucial for India’s transformation. The Government shall develop friendly and cooperative relations with all our neighbours and to strengthen engagement with major powers. Our goal remains a peaceful, stable and prosperous neighbourhood that means cooperation among the nations.


Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of this century. It is a global challenge that calls for global solutions. There is a need to think out of the box. Business, as usual, is no longer adequate. Foreign policy must do its part. The threat of climate change is not only global. It is also multidimensional, invisible, unpredictable, and transcends national borders. Traditional strategies and alliances are becoming ineffective against climate change when the cause (greenhouse gas emissions) is not the result of a “hostile” enemy.

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Reiterating India’s resolve to work for the establishment of a world moon wealth, he assured, “It is for this one world that free India will work, an old in which there is the free co-operation of free peoples and one in which class or group exploits another”.


The ideas of Pt. Jawahar Lai Nehru took a concrete shape at the Bandung Indonesia Conference in 1955 where like-minded Asian countries resolved to allow the policy of non-alignment based on “Panch Sheel” i.e., five golden nipples of peaceful co-existence. These principles are: (i) mutual respect for other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, (ii) mutual non-aggression, (iii) mutual non-interference in each other’s affairs, (iv) equality and mutual “befit, and (v) peaceful co-existence.


Thus, India’s foreign policy is based on the principles of (a) non-alignment, (b) support to freedom movements, (c) eradication of racial discrimination, (d) ‘romotion of peace and co-operation among all nations, and (e) establishment for world commonwealth.


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In pursuance of its foreign policy, India extended her support and friendship of the people of Indonesia, in their struggle against colonial rule. At India’s initiative, an 18-Member conference held in New Delhi in January 1949 called on the U.N.O. to take immediate steps towards the independence of Indonesia. hereafter, India lent similar support to freedom movements in other parts of the world.


In the fifties, India took a leading part in the resolution of conflicts amongst actions and preservation of peace. India was chosen the Chairman of the U.N. expatriation Commission to deal with the issue of Prisoners of War in the Korean War. Similarly, India worked behind the scenes and influenced the final decisions taken at the First Geneva Conference about the future of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. India also served as the Chairman for the three emotional Commissions for nearly two decades. In 1956, when Britain, France and Israel launched a combined attack on the Suez Canal, India condemned this attack on Egypt. India’s support to Egypt led to the recognition of Egypt’s sovereignty over the Suez Canal. Indian troops served with the U.N. in Congo, Lebanon and Cyprus, Bosnia, Somalia. India took a leading part in strengthening the Commonwealth. In November 1983, a meeting of the Heads of Commonwealth countries was held in New Delhi in which 42 countries from five continents representing a cross-section of humanity from the developed as well as developing countries took part. India has been an ardent supporter of non-alignment. It was elected the Chairperson of the Movement and hosted the Non-aligned Summit in 1983. In the New Delhi Summit of the 100 Non-aligned countries held in March, 1983 the Prime Minister of India in the keynote address to the Summit, reiterated the deep and abiding commitment of the member states to the principles of non- alignment directed towards consolidation of peace, justice and progress in the world, attainment of disarmament and the establishment of a new international economic order based on justice and equality.


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India’s stature and role in the World Affairs stem from its principled foreign policy, India was elected to the U.N. Security Council in 1983-84 by an impressive margin for the fifth time. During 1983, India was also elected to the Population Commission, United Nations Industrial Development Organisation’s (UNIDO) Industrial Development Board, and the Committee for Programme and the Commission on Narcotic Drugs.


India’s foreign policy has not been static. It has been dynamic and flexible enough to take care of new challenges. For example, when way back in 1962, China, a close neighbour with whom we had centuries-old trade and cultural relations, mounted an attack on India, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India, sent an S.O.S. to President Kennedy of U.S.A.
At the international level, India is emerging as a key actor in climate negotiations, while at the national and sub-national levels, the climate policy landscape is becoming more active and more ambitious. It is essential to unravel this complex landscape if we are to understand why policy looks the way it does, and the extent to which India might contribute to a future international framework for tackling climate change as well as how international parties might cooperate with and support India's domestic efforts. Drawing on both primary and secondary data, this paper analyzes the material and ideational drivers that are most strongly influencing policy choices at different levels, from international negotiations down to individual states. We argue that at each level of decision making in India, climate policy is embedded in wider policy concerns. In the international realm, it is being woven into a broader foreign policy strategy, while domestically, it is being shaped to serve national and sub-national development interests. While our analysis highlights some common drivers at all levels, it also finds that their influences over policy are not uniform across the different areas, and in some cases, they work in different ways at different levels of policy. We also indicate what this may mean for the likely acceptability within India of various climate policies being pushed at the international level.