Research area: Climate Policy

Handbook of Climate Change and India: Development, Politics and Governance

Summary

This Handbook brings together prominent voices from India, including policymakers, politicians, business leaders, civil society activists and academics, to build a composite picture of contemporary Indian climate politics and policy. The papers show that, within India, climate change is approached primarily as a developmental challenge and is marked by efforts to explore how multiple objectives of development, equity and climate mitigation can simultaneously be met. In addition, Indian perspectives on climate negotiations are in a state of flux. Considerations of equity across countries and a focus on the primary responsibility for action of wealthy countries continue to be central, but there are growing voices of concern on the impacts of climate change on India. How domestic debates over climate governance are resolved in the coming years, and the evolution of India’s global negotiation stance are likely to be important inputs toward creating shared understandings across countries in the years ahead, and identify ways forward. This volume on the Indian experience with climate change and development is a valuable contribution to both purposes.

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Avenues for Climate Change Litigation in India

Summary of the book

As frustration mounts in some quarters at the perceived inadequacy or speed of international action on climate change, and as the likelihood of significant impacts grows, the focus is increasingly turning to liability for climate change damage. Actual or potential climate change liability implicates a growing range of actors, including governments, industry, businesses, non-governmental organisations, individuals and legal practitioners. Climate Change Liability provides an objective, rigorous and accessible overview of the existing law and the direction it might take in seventeen developed and developing countries and the European Union. In some jurisdictions, the applicable law is less developed and less the subject of current debate. In others, actions for various kinds of climate change liability have already been brought, including high profile cases such as Massachusetts v. EPA in the United States. Each chapter explores the potential for and barriers to climate change liability in private and public law.

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Beyond Copenhagen: Next Steps

Introduction

Although not for the reason most climate watchers anticipated, the 15th Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the fifth Meeting of the Parties (CMP-5) to the Kyoto Protocol at Copenhagen marked an important moment in the history of the climate negotiations. Despite considerable political pressure, a much-anticipated legally binding instrument did not emerge from Copenhagen. But Copenhagen was remarkable nevertheless. Never before had an international negotiation attracted 125 heads of state and government, and expended as much political capital, yet failed to deliver in quite so spectacular a fashion. And never before had outcomes been this dramatically misaligned with popular expectations. There are many lessons to be learned from the Copenhagen experience, both substantively and in terms of process.

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Copenhagen: Climate of Mistrust

Summary

Two weeks of wrangling and grandstanding at the United Nations climate change conference ended with the “Copenhagen Accord”, which was a paper-thin cover-up of what was a near complete failure, though it does enable the process to move forward. These reflections on the climate negotiations first provide a brief encapsulation of events, followed by a discussion of the key negotiation issues that took centre stage. It then provides a political interpretation of the Copenhagen Accord and its future prospects. The reflections locate the process in the context of the larger, and unresolved tensions between the North and the South. The article concludes with an outline of what the Copenhagen experience suggests is needed in the Indian climate debate.

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Climate Politics in India: How can the Industrialised World Bridge the Trust Deficit?

In an ironic and to most Indians quite disturbing turn, India is increasingly portrayed as an obstructionist in the global climate negotiations. How did a country likely to be on the frontline of climate impacts – with a vast proportion of the world’s poor and a reasonably good record of energy-related environmental policy and performance – reach this diplomatic cul de sac? Part of the answer lies in the posturing of climate diplomats from India and industrialized countries. But looking beyond the cut and thrust of climate diplomacy, Indian climate policy and the reaction to it are a salutary case study in the failure to build North-South trust in the climate negotiations. Chapter published in ‘Indian Climate Policy: Choices and Challenges’.

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Climate Change and Development: A Bottom-Up Approach to Mitigation for Developing Countries

Summary

A top-down approach – with internationally specified and binding national targets and timetables – has long been the preferred position of environmental advocates. But bottom-up approaches, such as policy measures to be devised on a country-by-country basis, have also been part of the policy grammar of the climate negotiations. For those who put climate change mitigation first (as opposed to those who seek to preserve sovereignty, or emphasize untrammeled economic growth), a focus on targets and timetables is an article of faith. This chapter in ‘Climate Finance: Regulatory and Funding Strategies for Climate Change and Global Development’ suggests that focusing in the short run on explicit caps (or the implicit caps of climate plans) for developing countries is a misguided policy. It will not produce predictability of future emissions from current baselines, and in the short to medium term may be misguided for environmental reasons. Top-down approaches risk creating counterproductive incentives, such as incentives to set overly high emissions targets or to avoid early action. They may, in practice reduce, rather than increase, the predictability of emissions levels and of emissions reductions against BAU baselines or meaningful targets. The paper argues that strengthening domestic institutions in developing countries is needed for successful low-carbon development.

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Inconvenient Truths Produce Hard Realities: Notes from Bali

Summary

In the compromise road map for future climate change negotiations that was drawn up at Bali, the urgency suggested by science was lost. There are yet positives in that the US remains in the negotiating process and the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” of the developing countries has been maintained. India needs to now ask itself if it should hold on to a defensive national stance on climate or if the time is right to develop and implement creative national policies, and then articulate an international negotiating position around these policies.

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