In the last few weeks, Jairam Ramesh, India’s new Minister for Environment and Forests, has made it just that little bit easier to reach an accord at the upcoming Conference of Parties (COP) in Copenhagen. By promising various domestic measures that would help lower carbon emissions, Ramesh may help change the dynamic that has evolved over the last few years; many developed countries, including the United States and large developing countries, such as China and India, were using each other as excuses not to take the serious action that is required to meet the challenge of climate change. It is therefore with justification that Ramesh claims: “India wants to be a deal-maker, not a deal-breaker.”

Before elaborating on the actual content of these measures and their implications, we review the history of India’s position on climate change. This helps contextualize these pronouncements and appreciate their significance.

“Per Capita” as the Clue of the Emission Enigma

India has consistently argued since Rio that any agreement on the climate must be based on the principle that everyone has the same right to the atmosphere. This means that agreements should only be based on the long-term goal of the convergence of “per capita emissions”. Any agreement should also consider historical emissions of greenhouse gases by the developed world and the development needs of the rest of the world. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) also states that the “largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries, that per capita emissions in developing countries are still relatively low, and that the share of global emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs”.¹ In the Kyoto protocol, 37 industrialized countries committed to take “legally binding” reductions in greenhouse gas emissions but developing countries were not required to do so.

Though developed countries had signed on to the Kyoto protocol, there was domestic opposition in some cases to this agreement, and one of their arguments was that future emissions from rapidly growing, developing countries would be very high. In his March 2001 letter to the U.S. Senate, for example, President George W. Bush wrote: “I oppose the Kyoto Protocol because it exempts 80 percent of the world, including major population centers such as China and India, from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the U.S. Economy”. Such statements naturally set the stage for confrontation.

Two More Reasons for The Impasse

Two other factors contributed to the deepening impasse between developed and developing countries in the first decade of this century. The first was the lack of progress on achieving the emission reductions promised under Kyoto by developed countries. The second was the increased awareness of the effects of climate change, including the loss of glaciers and Arctic sea ice, prolonged dry spells and heat waves, disastrous events like Hurricane Katrina, and the risk of catastrophic change like the loss of Greenland’s ice-sheet. This has led a preference for more stringent targets (2°C or 450 ppm CO2e), especially in the EU, and consequently, an increased pressure on developing countries like India and China to have binding commitments. The pressure on India increased further after China switched to becoming much more pro-active about its climate and energy policies, and publicizing these policies in international fora.

This switch should be seen in light of the considerable difference between these countries. India’s per capita emissions are a third of China’s today. According to most projections, in 2030, they are likely to remain lower than China’s today, both in absolute and per capita terms. This is one reason that China is expected to, and is willing, to make stronger commitments in the future.

Fig 1. Energy emissions to gdp intensity of select countries. India’s emissions intensity has been improving steadily in the last 10 years and is comparable to the U.S. or global average though much less than Europe. Cick to enlarge

Awareness, Vulnerability and Steps Ahead

Despite these global developments, until recently climate change did not play a role in India’s energy planning. There was also insufficient attention given to the impacts of climate change on India’s water security, the Himalayan glacier system, the monsoons, and sea level rise. But in the last couple of years, this has begun to change.

Thanks to a combination of international pressure and an increased awareness of India’s own vulnerability to climate change, the Indian government established a national Council on Climate Change. It is composed of a high-level group of experts and senior government officials to advise the government on measures it can take to mitigate and adapt to the climate. In June 2008, this group released the National Action Plan for Climate Change (NAPCC), which proposed eight ‘missions’ with attention to both mitigation and adaptation. The mitigation missions include solar power (20GW by 2020) and enhancing energy efficiency while adaptation missions incorporate ones on conservation of water and making agriculture more resilient. The NAPCC, though a step forward, was not a real plan of action with well-defined objectives.

Another signpost in the evolution of India’s position was the declaration of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in June 2007, where he committed that India’s per capita emissions will, at all times in the future, never exceed the developed world’s emissions. Because this declaration was made at the Heiligendamm G-8 summit, it suggests that the driver may have been international pressure. The declaration, in effect, sets a falling cap on India’s emission levels depending on reductions in emissions by developed countries.

Future Emissions: The Commitment Will Hold Well

What does this mean in concrete terms? According to a recent study sponsored by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, India’s per capita emissions rise from approximately 1.7 t CO2e to somewhere between 2.8 and 5 tCO2e in 2030. Under most projections, India’s per capita emissions in 2030 would still be significantly below today’s global average (about 4.5 tCO2e). However, given India’s population, the total emissions would be comparable to current EU or US emissions. In other words, unless there is a drastic change from current expectations of emissions from developed countries, the Indian commitment will hold well.

This is in part because of various trends that are underway in India, even absent climate change considerations. India’s emissions intensity (carbon per unit of GDP) has been steadily falling for most of this decade, and is now comparable to Japan or Germany. This is primarily due to the growing importance of the service sector, the relatively small and falling contribution of manufacturing, and efficiency improvements driven by the high prices of gasoline and electricity for industries. With climate becoming an increasingly important aspect of policy making, one can hope that these trends will continue.

What has been added in recent weeks has been that even though India continues to believe in a long term goal of international climate negotiations based on a “per capita” formalism, it will also have binding domestic legislation for certain sectors². In addition, it will continue to operate by the Bali road map, specifically that “measurable, reportable, and verifiable” outcomes have to be supported by international funding. India will also annually report all the actions it has taken in the past year, an improvement on the current 5-yearly national communication.

Fig 2. Per capita annual emissions (CO2e) of the world’s top eight emitting countries. Note that India has the lowest (1.7 tCO2e) by a large margin and according to various projections (light green box) it will still be significantly lower than the 2005 global average in 2030. Cick to enlarge

From Delhi to Copenhagen (via Kyoto)

If India is bringing all this to the table, it also expects some measures in order to consider the Copenhagen COP a success. Ramesh recently laid out three key expectations: financial compensation for its afforestation initiatives, extension of clean development mechanism (CDM), and an international agreement on green technology transfer from the developed to developing countries. In addition, there is also interest in agreements on nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMA) and an adaptation fund, especially for countries already affected by climate change. While this signals flexibility, India has stated its strong opposition in attempts to replace Kyoto with a new treaty – a key EU negotiating position.

India is often said these days to be a rising global power. And, indeed, in a recent interview to a business newspaper, Jairam Ramesh explained that his trickiest task as the environment minister is balancing growth and environment protection, and that both “are extremely important milestones for India’s rise as a global power”. Though environmentalists have stressed this understanding of the interrelationship between the two for decades, it is only recently that the political and corporate elite has begun to appreciate how vulnerability to climate change will be a leading factor affecting India’s economic development. In June 2008, the investment bank Goldman Sachs warned, “If not given the right priority, environmental sustainability has the potential to become India’s greatest challenge”. This growing realization seems to have played a key role in propelling the shift in India’s position. The role of civil society, in particular, and that of some key analysts and commentators that have been involved in regular discussions with the policy making elite in Delhi have also been very important.

Even if it took its own time to arrive where it is currently, India, by demonstrating a willingness to undertake domestic mitigation actions, has now thrown the ball back at the developed world. The onus now, as it has always been, is for the developed world, especially the United States to demonstrate serious mitigation. And this has to be in the short run, by 2020. In the long run, as economist John Maynard Keynes remarked, we are all dead.

1. For example, the World Resources Institute estimates that in 2005, the per capita emissions of India was 1.7 tCO2e   whereas that of the United States was 20.3 tCO2e. In terms of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion between 1900 and 2005, the United States accounts for 29.4, EU for 25.4%, China for 8.6%, Russia for 8.3%, and India for only 2.4%. [↩]
2. This includes legislation on mandatory fuel efficiency standards for automobiles by 2011, appliance and building efficiency norms by 2012, and requiring 20% of energy   from renewable sources  by 2020, and programs that help increase forest cover. [↩]