The significance of India’s re-framing of climate change as climate justice goes beyond the numbers, which focus on milestones in >emissions reduction rather than global transformation.
The criticism that India’s use of coal for generation of electricity is projected to double by 2030 has to be seen in perspective as, according to the International Energy Agency, India will use less coal for electricity generation than the U.S. even in 2040.
Mukul Sanwal India, the third largest economy in PPP terms, is now offering concrete deliverables. In 2009, it had promised an emissions intensity reduction of 20-25 per cent by 2020, from 2005 levels. It has achieved an emissions intensity reduction of 18.6 per cent and will now aim for 33 to 35 per cent reduction.
Second, India will have 40 per cent of the total installed power capacity in 2030 based on non-fossil fuel-based sources. Currently, renewable energy, nuclear energy and hydropower together contribute 30 per cent of the overall installed capacity. With power production expected to triple, this will amount to 320 GW of non-fossil fuel capacity. India is seeking investments of U.S. $100 billion over seven years to boost the >domestic solar energy capacity by 33 times to 1,00,000 megawatts by 2022. Nuclear would increase more than ten times to 63GW and hydro power is expected to double to 84 GW, with land availability being the key concern.
Third, additional carbon sinks of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent will be created by 2030. The huge afforestation fund is meant to encourage the setting up of projects on forest land. The government also plans to >develop a 1,40,000-km tree-line along both sides of the national highways. Since sequestration depends on forest management, this element will require greater focus on implementation.
What is really new is that Prime Minister Modi is making climate change an integral part of national transformation. The geopolitical shift is also providing India the confidence to shape the new rules. >Addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit on September 25, Mr. Modi called for countries to “take into account the levels of development of various countries and allow them the developmental space so that they can also aspire to become middle and developed countries”.
The >Intended Nationally Determined Contributions state that India’s “objective in Paris in December 2015 is to establish an effective, cooperative and equitable global architecture”. Three key elements of this framework are promoting “sustainable production processes and sustainable lifestyles across the globe”, the “creation of a regime where facilitative technology transfer replaces an exploitative market-driven mechanism” and “a common understanding of universal progress.”
The lifestyle in India is already more austere than it is in China. China’s industrial production is eight times, consumption of primary energy five times, metals eleven times, GDP four times and per capita emissions two times higher. Moreover, climate variability will affect India much more than China. By 2030, per capita energy use and emissions in China and the U.S. are expected to around 10-12 tonnes of carbon dioxide per capita whereas India’s per capita emissions will be just one-quarter of this level. The information technology revolution spearheaded by India is the first global transformation not based on increasing use of energy.
India has also taken the initiative to host a meeting of 107 “sunshine” countries before the Paris summit, to forge a common platform on sharing research and looking for common financial solutions. Prime Minister Modi’s proposal at the G20 meeting in Brisbane in November 2014, to set up a global virtual centre for clean energy research and development and fund collaborative projects, will come up in the form of a draft Energy Access Action Plan to be discussed in the G20 in November 2015.
The importance of peaking of emissions is misplaced, as it does not address modification of longer term trends in natural resource use. The current emphasis on emission reductions really focuses on symptoms rather than causes and solutions. Faced with global ecological limits, focus has to shift from ‘environmental risk management’ to ‘economic growth within ecological limits’. It is in responding to this mega-trend that India’s climate policy could have been more forward looking. The focus everywhere is shifting from production patterns to consumption patterns. It has been estimated that currently three ‘basic’ human needs — housing, food, mobility — directly account for 80 per cent of resource use, 40 per cent of energy demand and 36 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions; nearly two-fifth of the cumulative emission reductions required by 2050 could come from efficiency improvements, making energy efficiency essentially a fuel.
Responding to this global trend, social sciences are reframing climate and global environmental change from a physical into a social problem. Authoritative reports point out that transforming key systems such as the transport, energy, housing and food systems lie at the heart of long-term remedies. It is on these parameters that periodic reviews of national contributions should be undertaken.
India should have integrated its >Smart Cities campaign into a plan for low carbon development of cities. The research focus would then shift to measuring consumption patterns and inevitable indicative targets for cities as China is now doing. Second, a greater focus on sharing rather than owning cars would impact the fastest growing emissions. Third, changing lifestyles must begin in schools. Fourth, better linkages are also needed — for example, afforestation in catchments of hydro projects to check silting.
At last we have a credible response to climate change and its adverse effects, making it an integral part of our transformation, not a response to a conference or external pressure, and that is why it will succeed.
(Mukul Sanwal wasDirector, United Nations Climate Change Secretariat, 1995-2008.)
