2070 target is fine, but India can do more

Weeks after states of Uttarakhand and Kerala faced flash floods killing and displacing thousands of people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other world leaders met at the premier global climate change conference, COP26, in Glasgow on Monday. The annual conference held since 1995 has already been responsible for watershed initiatives like the Paris Agreement. This year's conference has been touted as ‘make-or-break’ by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Being the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world (behind China and the USA, and followed by Russia and Japan), all eyes will be on India to see if it takes a proactive stance on climate change mitigation at Glasgow. India has set extremely ambitious targets at COP26, with the PM declaring for the first time a net-zero emission target of 2070 (China’s is 2060, while it is 2030 for most others). Although this has been generally welcomed by the global community, given its economic and diplomatic clout, India can do a lot more.

India’s participation in other multilateral fora on environmental issues, however, does not paint a very promising picture. Earlier this month, in a landmark resolution passed at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment was for the first time, explicitly recognised as a human right. India though was one of only four countries that abstained from voting for it, despite the fact that the Supreme Court has on multiple occasions, already declared the right to a clean and healthy environment as integral to the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution.

The inextricable link between international trade and environmental issues is well-recognised, with WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala stating earlier this year that, “new trade rules can help our economies become greener, cleaner, more prosperous, and more inclusive.” In fact, many environment-related trade issues are at the forefront of negotiations at the WTO’s 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) to be held later this year. Various countries have spearheaded plurilateral environment-related initiatives under the aegis of the WTO. These include the initiating of an informal dialogue on reducing plastic pollution and moving to a more environmentally sustainable plastics trade; discussions on reforming fossil fuel subsidies; and coordinating structured discussions on trade and environmental sustainability. India, however, perhaps wary of disguised protectionist measures, has not co-sponsored or contributed effectively to any of them.

Furthermore, according to official WTO statistics (taken from the WTO’s Environmental Database), India has since 2009, undertaken only 120 environment-related measures notified under various WTO Agreements, as opposed to 382 by Japan, 648 by China and more than 2,000 by the USA.

This, however, does not make for a completely grim reading. On the positive side, India has largely been on track to reach its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement and is one of the top countries in the world in terms of installed renewable energy capacity. There is also some merit in the argument that developed countries, being historically large polluters and possessing more technological capacity, have a bigger onus on taking positive climate action; and that a transition from a coal-based economy to a renewable energy-based one requires more time, support, and technical assistance from other developed countries.

Nonetheless, stronger multilateral proactivity is the need of the hour. Despite being a bystander to pollution contributions historically, India at present lies front and centre in the global climate crisis. In fact, there have already been increasing calls for India to set more ambitious climate change mitigation targets, and COP26 is an encouraging start.

With environmental issues taking up an increasingly important role in global discourse and MC12 looming, now is a better time than any for India to answer these calls on the world stage.

(The writer is a Master of Laws graduate from The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva)