National Climate Policies and Institutions

This chapter, published in ‘India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate Change and Development’, Oxford University Press, sets the stage for a discussion on policies by reviewing the emergence of national policies and national institutions. This discussion starts with the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) and its various Missions. It discusses how Indian climate policy was frequently dictated by the pursuit of ‘co-benefits’ that bring both climate and development gains, and the emergence of a multiple objectives framing as a useful guide for policy formulation. This leads to a discussion of the formulation of India’s NDC for the Paris Agreement. Significantly, the chapter also covers the spread of climate institutions, which while weak and in their early stages, provide the spaces within which climate discussion is likely to be mainstreamed, if at all, in coming years.