India’s Predicament on Climate Change

With the US and China sealing agreement on the carbon emissions recently, spot light turns to India as EU had pledged to cut down its emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.  Though India has still a year to make such a commitment to UN, Prime Minister Modi’s keen interest in conservation of nature and his passionate e-book in 2011: A convenient Action: Gujarat’s response to challenges of climate changes has raised hopes internationally about India’s committal towards climate change. India is the third largest emitter of green house gases after the US and China. The onus is high on India but the situation is quite daunting. India with second largest population in the World and nearly 25% of people lacking the access to power supply its reliability on coal had become inevitable leading to an inadvertent increase in global emissions. Fortunately, it is on the path of meeting the pledge made at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen 2009 of reducing the amount of carbon released for the same amount economic output 20 to 25 % over 2005 levels by 2020.

The fact remains that India is not China. China has almost reached the peak of its economic growth while India has embarked on the growth trajectory. While the percentage of population thriving on $1.25 a day (an International standard to measure poverty) in China is 6% it is 25% in India. Though coal consumption has surged last year in India, its per capita carbon emissions are miniscule 1.9 tonnes per person as against 7.2 for China and 16.4 in the US. China has promised to peak out its emissions by 2030 at the rate of 12 tons of carbon emission per person per year. But it hasn’t clearly indicated how it is going to attain the target. According to climate experts, if India intends to follow similar analogy, India doesn’t have to do anything.

India made a commitment at the UN of Development without destruction accentuating its strong commitment to increase its wind energy and solar energy capacity by 5 times over the next five and increase the efficiency of its automobiles, appliances and buildings.  India partnered with the US in 2009 for developing clean energy technologies. A new programme to scale up the renewable energy integration to power grids received a major fillip during Modi’s recent visit to the US.

But another cause of concern for environmentalists is the government’s policy to rev up power generation by boosting the domestic coal production. Coal is India’s primary source of energy accounting to 59%. To fuel India’s growth engine new government intends to ramp up coal production and Coal India has been asked to double its output to 1 billion tonnes by 2019. Also India intends to drastically cut down on the import of coal from Indonesia, South Africa, and Australia accruing major financial gains to the country. But the quality of domestic coal is poor with high ash content polluting two times more than the imported coal.  Hence India is pushing for renewable sources like solar technology, nuclear energy and wind energy. Though India has vast potential for Solar and wind technologies they are still in infancy.

Lima climate talks, scheduled for Dec 1^st will lay ground work for climate treaty to be ratified at Paris in Dec 2015 and will be implemented from 2020. The talks spanning 15 days will run on three parallel tracks with negotiations occurring over dozens of meetings followed by numerous close-door confabulations. While the 1995 Kyoto Protocol bound only developed countries which account for 40% of emissions, but the current round of commitments at Lima, scheduled to be submitted at United Nations Frame Work on Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by March would include all the major covering up to 80% of global emissions.

The talks will witness rigorous tussle between the developed and developing countries majorly over the promised financial commitment and pledging for enhanced reduction of carbon emissions. Besides there will be three major tracks- a pre-2020 track, what to commit track and Elements of Paris Protocol 2015. The Pre-2020 track focuses on the unfinished tasks of the developed countries both in terms of reduction of carbon emissions and mobilisation of financial fund of $100 billion per year and technological support pledged for the poor and developing countries. The less the developed countries accomplish before 2020, more will be the amount of burden shifted to the developing countries in the post-2020 era. These talks are the last chance for the developing countries to push the rich countries for more action; else the burden will be off loaded and distributed equally to all nations in the 2015 agreement. Under what to commit nations would have to contribute for climate change by making intended nationally determined contributions (INDC). Rich countries are keen that it should be limited to reduction of carbon emissions (mitigation). They are interested primarily in mitigation one of the pillars of UN talks belying other aspects-adaptation, finance and technology. Third and the most important track is designing the elements of 2015 agreement  which should set a level playing ground for all nations. During the Lima talks, India’s emphasis would be on Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) and operationalising the Green Climate Fund.

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