SOUTH ASIA

RESEARCH
www.sagepublications.com
DOI: 10.1177/0262728017745385
Vol. 38(1): 1–19
Copyright © 2018
SAGE Publications
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New Delhi,
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CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY OF INDIA:

MODIFYING THE ENVIRONMENT
Rajnish Saryal
Panjab University, Ludhiana, Panjab, India

abstract  Since the 1970s, and especially following the 1992 Rio
Earth Summit, climate change has become an area of high politics,
engaging the whole world at the international and diplomatic
level. What matters, though, is how this translates into tangible
policies at national and local levels, and how these different scales
interact. Highlighting India’s unique position in international
climate negotiations, this article first scrutinises various official
statements and documents of the Government of India (GOI)
on climate change and puts them into an analytical framework
that demonstrates continuities, but also significant recent shifts.
Investigating the reasons for such modifying trends and examining
their consequences, the article then suggests that partly owing to
recent changes in global and (geo)political contexts, but also due to
an Indian re-thinking of responsibility for addressing global climate
change, there is a significant new development. This seems to augur
a South Asian ‘silent revolution’ in green technologies, a prudent,
economically and ecologically beneficial step, not only for India but
possibly a sustainable global model.
keywords:  climate change, development, environment, global
climate negotiations, greenhouse gas emissions, India, UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change

Introduction
Climate change has emerged over the last few decades as a major issue of debate
in international politics and diplomacy. Leelakrishnan (2005: v) highlights that
‘[i]nternational efforts for the protection and preservation of the global environment
started with the convening of the Stockholm Conference on Human Environment in
1972’. The Brundtland Commission Report of 1987, which introduced the notion
of ‘sustainable development’ (Adams, 1990; Carter, 2001: 196), was followed by
the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, which adopted the UN Framework Convention on
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Climate Change (UNFCCC). Various reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change (IPCC) provide scientific, technical and socio-economic advice to
the world community, particularly the Parties to the UNFCCC, through periodic
assessment reports. Almost all countries of the world, with the notable recent
exception of the ‘trumped’ USA, recognise that climate change ranks high on a
list of various human development issues and foreign policy agenda. The haunting
threats suggest the urgent need to tackle climate change at all levels (Leelakrishnan,
1992: v). India is meanwhile together with China and the USA a major polluter
through emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and thus evidently among the most
important nations in determining the course of global climate negotiations and
the search for sustainable practices. Recent policy revisions and domestic measures
of the Government of India (GOI) to mitigate climate change, reflected also in
changing the name of the Ministry of Environment and Forests to Ministry of
Environment, Forests and Climate Change, signify growing awareness of the country’s
global responsibility. It indicates also the recent realisation that ‘green technology’
actually makes good business sense and can contribute significantly to new forms
of sustainable development.
In view of these significant changes in India’s position and approach, this article
first develops an analytical framework for studying to what extent India has been
consistent in global climate negotiations and how recent notable shifts may be
interpreted. It systematically analyses official statements and documents of the GOI on
climate change to demonstrate how India’s climate change policy has evolved through
two distinct phases. During the first phase, India’s policy seemed largely idealistic
and ideological, claiming basically that India remained a poor country and climate
change mitigation ‘was seen as the rich world’s job’, as succinctly put recently by Hans
Dembowski (Messner, 2017: 21). India’s earlier position in the larger environment
and development debates that characterise most early global climate negotiations
highlights a growing Indian predicament in these negotiations, however. Since India
turned into a major GHG emitter, this led to a notable self-contradiction, caused
by the combined pressures of poverty alleviation, development and rising expectations
that India, one of the world’s most populous nations, should play an increasing role
in global efforts to mitigate climate change. As India’s refusal to participate in burden
sharing turned into a form of self-harm, some creative re-thinking seems to have led
to significant policy shifts.
The current phase of India’s climate change policy thus seems characterised by
pragmatism. A meaningful modification is found in India’s current climate change
policy, which now turns towards concrete actions at international level as well as in the
country. The present article locates the reasons behind this highly significant policy
shift. It first explores the various contentious issues involved in the international climate
negotiations and circumscribes India’s basic position in the context of international
climate change politics. India’s policy on climate change is then analysed to show that
the country was initially sceptical both about the menace of climate change and the
Saryal: Climate Change Policy of India: Modifying the Environment 3

claimed strategies of developed countries. Therefore, India chose to insist on certain

equity principles in global climate negotiations earlier and still does so today to
some extent. Yet it appears that this defensive attitude has more recently turned into
ecologically inspired action that now seems to spearhead a new ‘green revolution’. The
article seeks to demonstrate how that modifying effect has been achieved and suggests
the need for further research on this.

Global Climate Change as an Impending Disaster

There is by now a massive literature explaining the menace of climate change, focused
on various still partly contentious issues (Adams, 1990; Carter, 2001; Leelakrishnan,
1992, 2005). Debates prominently concern the gradual rise in the average temperature
of the earth’s surface, which is predicted to bring profound global climate changes if
no action is taken (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001; Wigley &
Raper, 2001). Climate change is primarily seen as a result of increased GHG emissions
into the atmosphere. Any agreement that requires parties to lower the use of fossil
fuels or their replacement with some environment-friendly energy resources would, it
used to be argued, hamper industrial activities and shrink national economies. Such
claimed direct negative links between GHG emissions and economic growth made
global environmental negotiations very tough.
Average rates of global warming over the period 1880 to 2012 have been linked
to the principal reason of industrialisation (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, 2013: 5). This involved burning of ever greater quantities of oil, gasoline and
coal, cutting of forests and also certain intensive farming methods. These activities
increased the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide, methane
and nitrous oxide. Resulting climate changes are considered a serious threat to the
whole world. Predictions of precarity relate to drops in agricultural yields in most
tropical and sub-tropical regions, and in temperate regions, too, if temperatures
increase by more than a few degrees. Sea level rises could seriously affect many island
states (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2013: 11), such as the Maldives
in South Asia, and would damage the lives and property of many coastline states,
especially low-lying Bangladesh (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014b).

The International Institutional and Policy Framework

There has been rising awareness that something must be done, urgently, especially after
the Brundtland Report of 1987 put climate change firmly on the global agenda. Global
climate negotiations started systematically with the establishment of the UNFCCC
in 1992 at the UN Earth Summit of Rio de Janeiro, which adopted this Framework
Convention, which entered into force in 1994, and several other environmental
agreements. The Conference of the Parties (COP), a kind of world parliament on
climate change issues comprising all States that are Parties to the Convention, is the

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highest decision-making body of the Convention, meeting regularly in various parts

of the world (see Rhaman, 2016). The COP meetings review implementation of
the Convention, examining the commitment of Parties in light of the Convention’s
objective, new scientific findings and experience gained in implementing climate
change policies. COP-23 is being held in November 2017 in Bonn.
In 1997, the important Kyoto Protocol was adopted by COP-3 after intensive
and tense negotiations. Most industrialised nations and some central European
economies in transition (all defined as Annex B countries) agreed on legally binding
reductions in GHG emissions on an average of 6–8 per cent below 1990 levels
between 2008 and 2012, which meant basically the rich nations pledging to reduce
carbon emissions. India, at that stage, did not count itself among states needing to
take such action but played a significant role in the negotiations. Many contentious
issues remain, however, and some of the initial momentum has been lost, not the
least because the USA never ratified the Kyoto Protocol and other countries did
not fulfil their commitments.
In the COP-18 held in Doha, in December 2012, the Kyoto Protocol was extended
from 1 January 2013 to 2020. By 19 December 2016, this Doha Amendment had been
ratified by 74 states. In December 2015, during COP-21, Parties adopted the Paris
Agreement, which introduced a fundamental shift in the climate mitigation approach
from the Kyoto Protocol in two ways. First, the Paris Agreement advocated a bottom-
up approach over the top-down approach in climate mitigation action. Second, the
Paris Agreement brought some deviations from the legally binding regime established
through the Kyoto Protocol. Though the Paris agreement has been adopted and ratified
by many states, several issues are not fully addressed as yet. For example, there are no
specific details on financial support to take up more enthusiastic voluntary pledges
by developing countries and no provisions linked to financial compensation to least
developed countries (LDCs) for loss and damage due to climate change. Doubts have
thus been raised about the efficacy of the Paris Agreement in easing out the differences
between developed and developing countries over such contentious issues (Clémencon,
2016), while in 2017, President Trump infamously took the USA out of the Paris
Climate Change Agreement altogether.

India’s Predicament in the International Climate Change Negotiations

India has recently begun to admit publicly that it cannot simply follow the highly
carbon-intensive development path which the developed states used to pursue their
development with fossil fuel in the nineteenth and twentieth century. At the same
time, India is facing developmental bottlenecks as well as climate change vulnerabilities
because of her vast coastline, dependency on monsoon and the crucial role of glacier
melt for agricultural production. Failure to strike a robust multilateral climate deal
in the international climate negotiations would put India into a precarious position.
Intriguingly, China is presently revisiting the same issues.
Saryal: Climate Change Policy of India: Modifying the Environment 5

Among the major developing economies, however, India is still far behind China
in terms of GDP per capita as well as per capita emission of carbon dioxide. If carbon
intensity is calculated, India is closer to the USA than China, whose economy has
moved on rapidly, which also means that China can determine the peaking timeline
of the nation’s emission level better than India. Since the major challenge before the
GOI remains huge poverty, the continuing need and pressure to accelerate development
causes serious predicaments. India’s GDP per capita income for 2013 was estimated
at about US$1,499, while that of China for the same year was US$6,807. India’s
per capita carbon emission from 2010 to 2013 was estimated at about 1.7 metric tons,
compared to China’s 6.2 metric tons for the same period. India’s carbon intensity,
counted in kg per kg of oil equivalent energy use, for 2010–13, was calculated at 2.8,
in comparison to 3.3 kg for China and 2.5 kg for the USA (Jones & Saran, 2015). As
a major contributor to GHG emissions, India thus needs to take greater responsibility
for reductions, with increasingly serious question marks over traditional defensive
arguments of having to address poverty.
While there is much debate on methodology to determine the total number of poor
people in India, estimates have varied between 300 and 700 million. The Rangarajan
Committee estimated 363 million poor people in 2011–12, whereas Tendulkar
estimated 296.8 million for the same year (Planning Commission of India, 2014).
However, the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (2011) found
645 million poor people living in India in 2010. Most poor people do not have
access to modern energy sources (Rozarina, 2013: 152). To lift such large numbers
out of poverty, the only way forward is development, with whatever energy sources
at hand. India’s development trajectory is defined by three factors, the large size of
India geographically and demographically, the low starting point of development and
the high potential for development over the next few decades. This gives India most
important prospects for mass poverty elimination in the coming decades but also offers
both challenges and opportunities for sustainable development (Jones & Saran, 2015).
India’s priority and major challenge, in the near future, is how to provide better access
to affordable energy sources to more than 300 million Indians who presently do not
have access to modern energy sources, and then somehow shift to clean renewable
energy sources. Critically important here is the time gap between these two processes.
Or can they be brought about simultaneously?
As part of South Asia, India is highly vulnerable to various impacts of climate
change, largely due to its unique geography (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, 2014a). Problems are further aggravated by high population density and
continuing acute mass poverty. South Asia may experience increased flooding, high
rates of heat-related mortality and high risks of drought-related water and food
shortages (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014a: 22). India is under
severe international pressure to take a lead role in global climate negotiations. It
aspires to play a central role, also with an eye on power implications for South Asian
politics, related to two notions. The ideology of Big Brother makes India seek increased

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status in South Asia, possible only if it means lending a helping hand to other states.
The second notion relates to the power balance in Asia, given India’s concerns over
growing Chinese influence in South Asia, including demands for SAARC membership
(Ahmad & Singh, 2017). Further, ambition to act as a power axis of the region requires
maintaining a strong military with modern weaponry, reflected in the steady increase
in financial allocations to the army over time.
Such notions, however, run counter to holistically oriented communication
processes on which global climate negotiations are supposedly based. This links to
different schools of thought about international cooperation among sovereign states
and their feasibility, particularly in areas where national interests converge and conflict.
While the liberal school believes that environmental issues constitute one such area,
neoliberal institutional theorists argue that states shift their loyalty and resources to
larger institutions if they find them mutually beneficial and help them to realise their
common interests (Lamy, 2011; Saryal, 2015). Such predicaments make it further
evident that India needs to strike a delicate balance between developmental priorities,
security concerns and climate protection.

India’s Policy on Climate Change

This section examines how India has handled these competing issues over time.
The core question remains whether India’s responses to issues of climate change can be
placed into an identifiable analytical framework. The initial phase of India’s policy, as
noted, was characterised by idealism, born from the success of the Montreal Protocol
on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, adopted in 1987, wherein developed
states assumed responsibility both in terms of mitigation and financial liability. Based
on this approach, India initially considered climate change as a non-issue for itself,
believing that the developed countries would assume their responsibilities in line with
this Protocol. Over time, Indian negotiators articulated certain principles to justify
their stance of indifference towards climate change in international negotiations,
mainly ‘common but differentiated responsibility’, ‘per capita emission’, ‘equity’ and
‘environmental justice’. These principles found explicit mention in the agreement
among developing countries at the New Delhi Conference of Select Developing
Countries on Global Environmental Issues in April 1990. The conference agreed, as
reported in the Chairman’s summary (Rajan, 1997: 104–5) as follows:

Even assuming high economic growth by developing countries and stabilization of energy
consumption by the developed countries over the next 20 years, the developed countries
would continue to be responsible for a major portion of the greenhouse gas emissions.
The developing countries would [be] require[d] to increase their energy consumption
for their development and for alleviation of poverty. The responsibility for reduction of
greenhouse gas emissions to prevent a climate change would, therefore, rest with developed
countries. The developing countries will be prepared to cooperate in energy efficiency
measures but no targets can be fixed for the reduction of greenhouse emissions by them.
Saryal: Climate Change Policy of India: Modifying the Environment 7

The conference also stated that ‘any convention on climate change must provide for
technology transfer to the developing countries and funds to meet their resource
needs’ (Rajan, 1997: 105). The overall policy of the Indian government on climate
change during the initial years of negotiations revolved around this kind of equity-
based narrative, crystallised in Agarwal and Narian (1991), a publication by a Delhi-
based NGO. During the various sessions of the Intergovernmental Negotiating
Committee (INC) held from February 1991 to May 1992, the Indian delegation
trod cautiously. They insisted on adopting ‘per capita equity’ as a rightful way to
determine responsibilities to reduce GHG emissions, as India’s per capita emission
was far less than that of developed countries (Dasgupta, 2011: 89). India’s stance
during the INC sessions included this concept of ‘per capita equity’, opposition to
any international review of the national policies of developing countries, willingness
to consider contractual commitments and demand of separate funds under the
Climate Convention.
The text of the UNFCCC, finally adopted in 1992, provided an overall policy
framework. It did not include binding obligations for developing countries.
By contrast, it recognised that developed countries were principally responsible for
contributing to climate change, since their developmental activities had extended over
a long time span of industrialisation. India could influence this outcome on the basis
of a report published by the Delhi-based NGO Centre for Science and Environment
(CSE) which highlighted that carbon emissions remain in the atmosphere for a long
time (Agarwal & Narian, 1991, 1992: 27–33). The UNFCCC admitted that the
Global North had been developing for longer than the Third World, so action to
address this might proportionately lie with the industrialised nations. Article 3.1 of
the UNFCCC of 1992 clearly asks all countries to share the burden of reducing GHG
emissions at different levels based on their respective capabilities. The Convention
thus placed responsibility on all UNFCCC members to work out the full details to
control GHG emissions in future years. India’s High Commissioner to Australia,
G. Parthasarathy (1998: 3), made India’s policy on global climate change at that
point aptly clear when he argued:

There has naturally been increasing global concern about the growing atmospheric
concentration of greenhouse gases. We do, however, believe that the entire issue needs
to be viewed from a proper historical perspective, which takes into account the extent
to which countries of the world have each contributed to this problem and how we can
deal with this problem in an equitable manner. Countries like India which are only now
set on the road to sustainable development cannot obviously be asked to take measures
which would adversely affect their efforts to provide food, clothing and shelter to their
people within the shortest possible time. It is, after all, the countries of the developed world
which have created a problem for the world’s environment by what many would regard as
being conspicuous consumption and luxurious living. The needs of a man yearning for a
second meal in a developing country, in our view, require to be more urgently addressed
than the passion of a youth for a second sports car in an affluent country.

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Parthasarathy (1998) further raised the argument that since the primary cause for
the depletion of the ozone layer, global warming and other developments like the
dumping of hazardous wastes had been policies designed to facilitate the increasingly
high levels of consumption in developed countries, the main responsibility for
combating pollution rested with them, based on the ‘Polluter Pays Principle’. When
India ratified the Kyoto Protocol in August 2002, Subodh Sharma, an adviser to the
Ministry of Environment and Forests, on the eve of ratification, said that India did
not have to commit anything right now, adding however that ‘the ratification means
India has confirmed its willingness to be bound by it in future’ (People’s Daily Online,
2002). As a developing country, India was not immediately required to reduce GHG
emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Rather, it was expected to benefit from transfer
of technology and additional foreign investments into sectors, such as renewable
energy, energy generation and afforestation projects, once the Kyoto Protocol comes
into force. Accession to the Kyoto Protocol would enable India to take up clean
technology projects with external assistance in accordance with national sustainable
development priorities. After Cabinet approval of the Kyoto Protocol, the then Union
Information and Broadcasting Minister, Sushma Swaraj, said the protocol would enable
India to access adaptation funds, which could be used for undertaking activities for
water resource management, land management, agriculture, health and monitoring
of diseases (The Times of India, 2002).
India then hosted COP-8 in New Delhi from 23 October to 1 November 2002.
During this conference, India rejected pressure on poor nations to step up efforts to
tackle global warming by cutting GHG emissions. The then Prime Minister of India,
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, argued that countries like India still produced only a fraction of
the global GHG emissions and could not afford the costs of cutting them. Opening the
ministerial talks at the Conference, he insisted that poor countries should not be forced
to set targets for reducing GHG emissions and stated: ‘Climate change mitigation will
bring additional strain to the already fragile economies of the developing countries
and will affect our efforts to achieve higher GDP growth rates to eradicate poverty
speedily’ (Gaur, 2003: 286).
In the COP-13 at Bali, India reiterated its position on GHG reduction. A senior
member of the Indian delegation said that industrialised countries should fulfil the
commitments made under the Kyoto Protocol and there should be quick progress on
concluding negotiations for GHG emission reductions by these countries in a post-
Kyoto world (Gupta, 2007). Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, former Ambassador and
Fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) said that developing countries
are most vulnerable to climate change, because they lack the resources and technology
to build infrastructure to deal with climate change. The only solution is accelerated
development to generate the necessary resources (Gupta, 2007).
The Indian government remained apprehensive about the contemplated attempts of
developed countries to segregate environment and trade issues. While environmental
issues were on the agenda of the UN, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
Saryal: Climate Change Policy of India: Modifying the Environment 9

the World Bank monopolised economic and trade issues. Dubey (1993: 121–2)
argues that hardcore economic issues, such as the removal of poverty, development
strategies, trade, money, finance and debt, have been taken off the UN agenda and
were transferred to the IMF, the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariff
and Trade (GATT), over which developed countries have greater control, permitting
them to use cross-conditionalities and cross-retaliation. One sees here reflections of
India’s still latent concerns about re-colonisation and dependence on foreign capital
(Khilnani, 2012: 76).
The developing countries, highly dependent on World Bank and IMF support
for their developmental projects, although they had a greater say in the UN General
Assembly, were in a less advantageous position on climate change issues. The then
Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, in his statement at the General Debate of
the 63rd UN General Assembly, reiterated the well-articulated Indian position when
he confirmed support for multilateral negotiations taking place under the UNFCCC.
However, ‘[t]he outcome must be fair and equitable and recognize the principle that
each citizen of the world has equal entitlement to the global atmospheric space’ (Prime
Minister’s Office, 2008a).
The remarkable consistency in India’s policy to categorise climate change
interventions as an issue primarily for the developed world and to address this from
the equity perspective since the beginning of international climate negotiations can
be ascribed to many factors. The Indian climate negotiators, generally drawn from
the Indian Foreign Service, preferred closed door negotiation strategies that remained
largely immune from domestic politics and its influences. The Indian media and
Indian environmentalists were also sceptical about the global climate change discourse
and therefore adopted an indifferent attitude towards it (Boykoff, 2010; Lele, 2011).

The Flavour of Pragmatism

Scholars have argued that the post-2007 period witnessed a shift in India’s climate
change policy (Thaker & Leiserowitz, 2014). The constitution of the high-powered
Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change in 2007 to coordinate the national action
for assessment, adaptation and mitigation was perceived as a pragmatic step. This
pragmatism also appeared in the speeches of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose
proposal at the Heiligendamm G8 summit in 2007, that India’s per capita emission
will not exceed that of the industrialised countries at any point of time, generally
referred to as the ‘Singh Convergence Principle’ (SCP), was the most pragmatic step
(Ramachandran, 2009). SCP was a sensible position for India to take, as it required
developed countries to first reduce their per capita emissions before bringing India
under the cap regime. SCP also provided an essential leeway to the Indian economy
to develop while increasing per capita emission to a certain level. This reasoning
became amply clear when the Prime Minister in the same address argued: ‘The time
is not ripe for developing countries to take quantitative targets as these would be

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counter-productive on their development processes’ (Prime Minister’s Office, 2007).

The same point was reiterated by India’s Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, at the
World Economic Forum’s India Summit in New Delhi on 3 December 2007: ‘Our
per capita emissions will never exceed the per capita emission of the developed world.
The challenge now is to the developed world: Bring down your per capita emissions,
we will remain below that’ (The Economic Times, 2007).
While the post-2007 period did not witness any fundamental shift in India’s climate
change policy, which continued to address climate change from the equity perspective,
more recently usage of a new hard-headed vocabulary on climate change is observed
in Indian official statements, combined with signs of readiness on the part of Indian
policymakers to be part of the solution. The adoption of the National Action Plan and
linkage of energy security and climate action through the ‘co-benefit approach’ indicates
India’s pragmatic policy shift on climate change. The National Action Plan on Climate
Change would ‘identify measures that promote our development objectives while
also yielding co-benefits for addressing climate change effectively’ (Prime Minister’s
Council on Climate Change, 2008). This means that though development remains
India’s central priority, the focus has shifted to climate mitigation as a by-product
of developmental activity. Regarding adoption of this co-benefit approach, Dubash
(2012) argues that the political priority given to actions to address energy security,
and the alignment of climate mitigation as a potential co-benefit of such action, has
created the impetus for policies affecting climate mitigation, though they may not be
primarily labelled as such.
In July 2009, India signed the Declaration of the Major Economies Forum (MEF)
on Energy and Climate, held alongside the G8 summit in L’Aquila in Italy. This
required all parties to identify a global goal for substantially reducing emissions by
2050 (Ramachandran, 2009). This move of the Indian government was envisaged by
critics as a compromise on India’s previous position on climate change. The text of the
declaration includes certain terms and phrases like ‘meaningful deviation’, which for
some critics are highly objectionable. Shyam Saran, India’s special envoy to the Prime
Minister and chief negotiator in the climate change talks, however, clarified how the
Indian Government interpreted these phrases. He argued that developing countries
have already committed themselves to deviation from their ‘business as usual’ equity-
based trajectories, provided this is supported and enabled by financing, technology
and capacity building by developed countries. This is fully reflected in the MEF
Declaration, and adding the adjective ‘meaningful’ does not change the nature of the
bargain (Ramachandran, 2009). The declaration clearly endorsed the Indian viewpoint
that any global responses to climate change ‘should respect the priority of economic
and social development of developing countries’ (Prime Minister’s Office, 2009).
Though India did not budge from its stated position on climate change in any
significant manner, establishment of the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change,
the Singh Conversion Principle, the co-benefit approach and the MEF Declaration
on voluntary mitigation targets brought about a significant shift in the country’s
Saryal: Climate Change Policy of India: Modifying the Environment 11

earlier climate narratives, indicating India’s desire to follow a low carbon growth path.
This change in India’s climate change policy has been noted by many commentators
(Atteridge et al., 2012; Patodia, 2011). The unilateral launch of India’s National
Action Plan on Climate Change on 30 June 2008 clearly exhibited India’s solemn
commitment to reduce GHG emissions. This Plan included eight national missions
that address India’s energy requirements through eco-friendly energies for sustainable
development. These include a National Mission on Solar Energy, on Enhanced Energy
Efficiency, on Sustainable Habitat, on Conserving Water, on Sustaining the Himalayan
Ecosystem, on creating a ‘Green India’, on Sustainable Agriculture and finally, on
establishing a Strategic Knowledge Platform for Climate Change (Prime Minister’s
Office, 2008b). The Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change that prepared this
National Action Plan comprised of core members of the cabinet and several experts.
This nodal body on policy matters and implementation review implies that the Prime
Minister had direct control over matters related to climate change. The GOI has
since taken 20 initiatives to address climate change issues, ranging from mass-scale
afforestation to the launch of a satellite to monitor GHG (Ministry of Environment,
Forests and Climate Change, 2009).
In a speech to the inaugural session of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit
2011, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reiterated his earlier stance on per capita
emission, but chose a different vocabulary to suggest the most pragmatic solution to
the issue of climate change. Singh (2011) said:

We have to recognise that the world must move away from production and consumption
patterns which are carbon-intensive and energy-intensive. Without this shift in the
patterns of energy generation and use, ecologically sustainable development will remain
mostly a pious aspiration if not merely a buzz word. We have to make changes in our
lifestyles, particularly in the developed world, and learn to make do with less. In
developing countries, poverty eradication will have to be linked to the availability of
clean, renewable and affordable energy. I believe that charting these new pathways is not
beyond our collective imagination. Life as we know it on our beautiful planet is at stake.

Current Developments
Following the change of guard at the centre in India after the general elections of 2014,
pragmatism has continued with vigour and, it seems, some new insights. The deep
interest in climate change of Prime Minister Narendra Modi became evident when
a few months after taking charge, he reconstituted the Prime Minister’s Council on
Climate Change in an attempt to ‘revive and streamline the council and set the agenda
to deal with climate change’ (Menon, 2014). In the COP-20 in Lima, the Indian
Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change stressed India’s commitment
and readiness to play its part in the global fight against climate change. However, this
also contained a familiar message reflecting India’s aversion of being dictated to by
outsiders. Similarly, before the COP-21 in Paris, the GOI unequivocally stated that the

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Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), the instruments submitted

to the UNFCCC before the Paris Conference, should be ‘nationally determined’. These
INDC documents are prepared by each state to deal with the national measures of
each respective state to combat climate change. These documents were submitted to
the UNFCCC and discussed in the COP-21 in Paris, which culminated in the Paris
Agreement.
Significantly, the then Indian Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate
Change argued that ‘we do not see any role for any ex-ante review in this process’
(Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, 2014). One may read this
again as rejection of any outsider interference. In the follow-up, the Minister was
more conciliatory, but also practically focused and forward-looking when he said in a
conference organised by the Council for Energy, Environment and Water that India
was mulling over two proposals to be submitted to the COP-21 in Paris and may
submit two INDC options. The first one will be about what can be achieved simply
with domestic resources and the second will show where India could reach if finances
were available from industrialised countries and relevant technologies were available
at affordable cost (Gupta, 2015).
Recently, Prime Minister Modi has added a new dimension to India’s policy on
climate change when he asked the concerned Ministries to formulate India’s climate
change policy along more practical lines. Modi himself added a new component to
India’s policy on climate change while addressing the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) when he said: ‘Too often, our
discussion is reduced to an argument about emission cuts. But, we are more likely
to succeed if we offer affordable solutions, not simply impose choices’ (Ministry of
External Affairs, 2015). While this argument still retains the Indian stance of resistance
to pressures from developed states to accept quantified targets of emission cuts, this
now begins to express India’s desire to follow a low carbon development path. This
new stance of India’s policy on climate change was further reflected when Modi
addressed the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and specifically asked this ministry to take
a lead in preparing presentation material based on the Indian cultural ethos for the
Paris Conference. The idea was to demonstrate to the world India’s contribution in
protecting the environment through the ages (Prime Minister’s Office, 2015a).
It may be tempting for outsiders, but would be rather short-sighted, to simply
dismiss this as Hindu nationalist rhetoric, for ecological awareness is an ancient
Asiatic and not just Indic topic on which there is much literature (Callicott &
Aimes, 1989; Narayan & Kumar, 2003). Moreover, Modi hails from Gujarat
and is influenced by Gandhian Hindu/Jaina philosophical principles concerning
connectedness of all life forms. He has even written a book on this (Modi, 2015).
India’s revised handling of policy on climate change under the new post-2014
regime at the centre thus signifies two features. First, India still questions the moral
conscience of developed states to hold India and other developing states accountable
for climate change, insisting that, first of all, the developed states themselves are
Saryal: Climate Change Policy of India: Modifying the Environment 13

historically responsible. India’s continued emphasis on this equity frame reflects a

robust consistency in India’s policy on climate change. Along with this historical
responsibility argument and equity frame, however, India now also projects itself as a
guardian of Nature, remembering and invoking Indic cultural elements that symbolise
Nature as a power beyond humans, considered sacrosanct and to be respected,
not destroyed. While questioning the moral conscience of the developed states,
India thus assumes a newly refigured moralising leadership role in the fight against
climate change, reflected in a significant shift of the language Indian policymakers
use to discuss climate change. This assertion seems related to recent changes in
the political landscape of India as well as the changing geopolitical context of the
world, especially as India has achieved consistent economic growth and therefore
now claims a high seat at the world’s negotiation tables. This is the aim not only
in multilateral economic negotiations but also in climate change discourses. In an
address to the Heads of the Indian Missions in New Delhi, Prime Minister Modi
said that the present global environment represents a rare opportunity, when the
world is keen to embrace India, and India is moving forward with confidence.
He urged the Heads of the Indian Missions to use this unique opportunity to help
India position itself in a leading role, rather than just as a balancing force, globally
(Prime Minister’s Office, 2015b). What is unique about India taking a leadership role
in climate change is not merely concern about binding caps on India’s admittedly
growing carbon emissions but a desire to make the world understand the value of
behaviour regulation and changes in life style in the wider context of climate change
mitigation action. Actually, this is then harking back to the aforementioned speech
of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2011, further reason not to simply
dismiss the emerging India’s discourse as a convenient Hindutva agenda. Rather, it
seems based on serious concern for the future of the whole planet and amounts to
an Indian commitment to share the burden.

The Role of Makers in the Paris Agreement

Notably, India played an important role in the 2015 Paris agreement. The approach
of the GOI in the Paris negotiations was proactive and projected India now as a
part of the solution. Bagchi (2016) has observed that the Paris agreement saw India
as part of the global leadership that actually hammered out a deal, with Modi and
Obama on the phone, working together to reach viable agreements.
The Indian Government then ratified the Paris Agreement at the UN headquarters
in New York on 2 October 2016, significantly choosing Mahatma Gandhi’s birth
anniversary to demonstrate to the world that India is following the guidance of
one of its greatest leaders, who ‘led a life of minimum carbon footprints’ (The
Guardian, 2016). Timely ratification of the Paris agreement by the GOI also assumed
importance because it provides India an opportunity to obtain a seat in the 55/55
conference, the agreement being that when 55 states with 55 per cent emission

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14 South Asia Research  Vol. 38(1): 1–19

have ratified the Paris agreement, they would set up a 55/55 Conference, which is
expected to write the new rules of the global climate order. Participating actively
in this is quite contrary to India’s earlier hesitant position, with the GOI generally
being late to take such decisions.

Conclusions
The aforementioned analyses of the changing trajectory of India’s climate change
discourse can now be summed up. First, India realised that it did not achieve any
substantial success by merely sticking to earlier equity-focused principles. Second,
the strategy of asking for aid and technology transfer from the developed world
without any corresponding groundwork at home has not yielded results for India
so far. Third, it is now well recognised that the issue of climate change cannot be
resolved without the active support of rapidly growing economies like India. As a
rapidly growing economy, India could not simply ignore the mounting pressure on
the country as one of the major global polluters to take a lead role in the mitigation
process. Fourth, India cannot equate herself with the LDCs of the world, given the
scale and level of the country’s economic growth and development. Fifth, since
2007, there has been a pragmatic shift in India’s climate change policy and India
is meanwhile doing reasonably well in setting up unilateral targets for mitigation
of GHG emissions, particularly, after some earlier reluctance (Kalle & Kasi, 2016)
by emphasising solar energy. On the opening day of the Paris Conference, Prime
Minister Modi and the French President launched an International Solar Alliance
(2015), inviting all countries located fully or partially between the Tropics of
Cancer and Capricorn to boost solar energy in developing countries through joint
efforts. The prime objective of this alliance is to pursue cooperation in training,
building institutions, regulatory issues, common standards and investment,
including joint ventures.
India needs such developments to eradicate poverty but also has to be careful about
environmental implications. Therefore, a well-balanced strategy would help to achieve
both development and climate protection. A modified co-benefit approach seems
well suited to Indian requirements. The test will be to see how well India pursues
this approach in achieving both development and climate protection, particularly in
the wake of ratification of the Paris agreement, through which India has given a clear
signal to the world community that she wants to be part of the solution. An effective
climate agreement is clearly in India’s interest, being among the world’s countries
that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Before going to the Paris
COP, India knew that an effective climate deal would only be possible if India played
a leading role in hammering out the deal.
The recent shift in climate change policy of the GOI is, thus, strongly grounded
in global, national and local realism. The consistent economic growth of India over
the last few years and the potential to maintain such growth in the coming decades
Saryal: Climate Change Policy of India: Modifying the Environment 15

has brought India closer to the USA, a position replicated in China, which also now
assumes global leadership in climate change matters. This changed geopolitical context
of the world, compared to the early 1990s, means that India is no more willing to act
as a leader of the G77 coalition of developing nations in climate change negotiations,
as happened initially. Instead, India has formed a group with other fast-emerging
economies to promote her national interests in climate change negotiations. Enthused
by a fairly consistent economic growth rate, India now aspires to a high seat not only in
various multilateral economic forms but also in the UN Security Council. To achieve
all of this, a more responsible and constructive shift in India’s (and China’s) climate
change policy has been a logical step.
Intriguingly, one sees here another example, though, where earlier Congress rule
in India prepared certain policy changes, but the BJP regime now reaps the benefits,
literally modifying the agenda. Currently, thus, another silent revolution seems to
be underway in India, as various local schemes to harvest solar and wind energies
are beginning to bring real benefits to local people, while helping to reduce toxic
environmental impacts. The realisation that this is ecologically sustainable and
good for business presents further evidence that India’s vision of development is not
merely following ‘Western’ trajectories. In a different time and place, creative and
ecologically sustainable solutions for addressing bottlenecks of development need
to be found, and some are already in place. What is now needed is perhaps less talk
at high diplomatic levels and instead more focus on well-targeted action, delivering
development where it really matters, at the local level. Researching such developments
will require different skills than the current article could bring to the debate. The
image of Prime Minister Modi as a doer rather than a vain talker may yet take on a
different dimension of good governance also in this particular context where, again,
there is more to Indian developments than meets the eye at first, as Midthanpally
(2017) recently shows on demonetisation. The somewhat playful term of ‘modifying’
India could perhaps now be applied also to the management of energy production in
India, seeking to bypass the traditional carbon trap of development and its polluting
consequences. That this is not the only possible narrative is obvious, as massive
pollution and GHG emissions will remain a prominent feature for the foreseeable
future, too, requiring rigid monitoring and constant critical re-assessment. But India’s
development and investment strategies today do not only speak a new diplomatic
language, as this article shows, they are now also taking pragmatic and ecologically
sound shapes at the local and regional level. Since human existence per se has many
polluting impacts on the environment, an ancient truth worth remembering, the
increasingly visible silent revolution of green technologies in India shows the way
for better ecological sustainability. A large window of opportunity has thus been
opened to make India a more responsible partner in the global theatre of climate
change negotiations and actions, showing again that South Asia remains a fascinating
laboratory for the immensely complicated challenges that global humanity faces in
the twenty-first century.

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Rajnish Saryal is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University Institute

of Law, Panjab University Regional Centre, Ludhiana, India. His research interests
comprise international relations theory and environmental politics, climate change
and the politics of connectivity (geopolitics). The author thanks the anonymous peer
reviewers for constructive critical comments that sharpened the argumentation in
this article.
Address: Department of Political Science, Panjab University Regional Centre, Civil
Lines, Ludhiana, Panjab, India. [E-mail: rajnishsaryal@gmail.com]

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