Indian Climate Policy - Global Commons Institute

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CLIMATE CHANGE THREATS TO INDIA’S WATER RESOURCES AND EMERGING POLICY RESPONSES | 19 Stimson’s Regional Voices: Transnational Challenges project is devoted to enhancing the information and analysis available to policymakers about emerging transnational security challenges in the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Africa. It seeks the direct input of experts and practitioners in the regions, especially those who constitute new voices in the conversation with the US policy community. In its work on environmental change, Regional Voices works with many partners in its countries of interest, including India. The project currently maintains a strong partnership with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a New Delhi-based institution that works to provide environment-friendly solutions to rural energy problems; tackle global climate change issues across continents; advance solutions to growing urban transport and air pollution; and promote energy efficiency in Indian industry.
INTRODUCTION | 1 I INTRODUCTION David Michel n order to negotiate effectively on an international regime for climate change, US policymakers must have an accurate understanding of the constraints and considerations that determine the negotiating positions of key countries. India plays a pivotal role in these efforts. In the run up to the December 2009 negotiations in Copenhagen, India has proven to be a canny negotiator, constantly seeking to balance the demands of major Western countries with the positions of the developing world. But the high stakes drama of international negotiations often leads observers to treat India as a monolithic actor with a single set of opinions and needs. The essays in this volume are intended to counter this assumption and to show the rich, diverse, and often divergent viewpoints that inform India’s approach to climate change. The Indian experts who have contributed to this volume address various aspects of the climate challenge, ranging from the risks to Indian energy security and water resources to the dynamics of greenhouse diplomacy and the opportunities and obstacles to Indian policy leadership. Despite the variety of perspectives they bring, the papers display a remarkable degree of unanimity in support of a national consensus that insists on the imperative of economic development and contests the perceived unfairness of the developed countries’ positions on global climate negotiations. Indian Climate Policy: Choices and Challenges illustrates the complex constraints on Indian policymakers and provides material for more fruitful, better-informed discussions in Washington, Delhi, and all points between. * * * * India looms increasingly large in global climate policy. In 1990, when negotiations on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) began, India produced 0.6 billion metric tons (0.6 Gt) of carbon dioxide, less than the Ukraine and about the same as the UK, a country one fifteenth India’s size. Today, as the international community wrestles to reach agreement on global greenhouse strategies to succeed the expiring Kyoto Protocol, India’s emissions have more than doubled to 1.3 Gt CO 2 . India now ranks as the world’s third largest consumer of primary energy supplies and its fourth largest carbon emitter. By the same token, the size of the Indian economy
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