A postcard from India…

For this week’s commentary, we turn our attention to developments in India and have handed the pen to Ramesh Kumar for the first in a series of articles. In this commentary he’s kicking off with an overview of the legislative framework for decarbonisation currently being discussed.

Not a single day passes without the Indian print media (dailies and magazines) featuring the Climate Change impact on the 1.4 billion population of the country. Normal living is impacted with the rise in hospitals attending to cancer, asthma, and the rulers are aware of the economic, social and political consequences of climate change.

Faced with this and recognising the balance between on-going development and the challenge of climate change, India has set a target date of 2070 to achieve the Net Zero goal. While this is later than the 2050 target the member states of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have signed up to it is important to understand the context: The entire Southern Asia region represents only 4% of historical cumulative net manmade emissions between 1850 and 2019, even though the region includes almost 24% of the global population.

North America and Europe alone have contributed almost 10 times more to global cumulative emissions in this period, though they have only ~13% of the global population. India’s historical contribution to cumulative global GHG emissions is therefore minuscule despite having a share of ~17% of the world’s population. India’s per capita annual emissions are about a third of the global average.

As a result, India believes it is justified in seeking that developed countries undertake early net-zero, well before 2050, by investing heavily in negative emissions, and providing adequate climate finance, technology transfer and capacity building support. India maintains that it is not running away from its commitment. But it cannot be bulldozed by the developed world.

To prove the point, India states it has achieved its pre-2020 voluntary contributions, and its policies and actions are acknowledged to be compatible with the targets of the Paris Agreement.

On the legislative front, experts point out significant gaps in India’s climate change-related law and policies. “The Paris Agreement lacks an enforcement mechanism as well as tools to enhance ambition. The national climate-relevant legislations lack climate specificity, and there are limitations to what litigations can achieve,” explain C Bhushan and T Gopala Krishnan of the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability & Technology, in a recent study on the Environmental Laws and Climate Action.

Conceding that there is a difference of opinion among experts for a new climate change legislation, they conclude that a framework of climate change legislation is required for India to provide a “vision, coordination, target and predictability to mainstream climate change mitigation and adaptation.”

A private member bill on climate change was circulated in the Indian Parliament in 2021, to get the debate going. It was modelled on the UK Act, proposing methodology for carbon budgeting. A cumulative budget up to 2050 was to be prepared and implement laws and policies to stay within the stated carbon budget with the involvement of various stakeholders. A National Committee on Climate Change, modelled on the UK’s Climate Change Committee, has been proposed.

India has ambitious NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions) targets, but lacks the legal framework for reaching economy-wide net zero targets at this stage. The country has taken proactive steps to introduce plans and policies such as the National Action Plan for Climate Change (NAPCC), the State Action Plan for Climate Change (SAPCC), and India’s long-term low-carbon development strategy (LT LEDS) signal a strong commitment to climate action.

India does not have formal climate legislation at either the federal or state levels, and several environmental and sectoral legislations are often interpreted to implement climate action. However, the legacy environmental laws pre-date the climate change discourse and do not include greenhouse gases as an explicit focus.

Recent sectoral laws and amendments, such as the Electricity Amendment Act (2023), have made efforts to integrate climate action by promoting renewable energy. However, these laws are largely focused on improving regulation and sectoral efficiencies, and the discourse on climate action and emission reduction is largely ‘incidental and peripheral’.

Think tanks such as Climate Policy Initiative point out that while all these laws are relevant to climate action, the existing focus (or lack of it) may not be sufficient to drive India’s ambitious emission reduction target. “While policy and targets demonstrate India’s commitment to solving the global climate problem, policy needs to be provided additional teeth through a legal framework and suitable laws,” it adds.

Any legal framework for net zero might require recalibration of the existing environmental laws. One of the ways to do it could be to combine Air, Water, and Environment Protection acts under an umbrella Climate/ Environment Act which includes both mitigation and adaptation. An overarching union law may not be enough and the same needs to be followed up with institutions (including redefining existing ones like the National Green Tribunal, Pollution Control Boards, and State climate cells), rules and procedures, penalties and incentives for economic agents including sub-sovereign states to align on the low carbon trajectory.

Clearly there is much to be done as India prepares for this significant shift in development around sustainability, but the political will is there and things are starting to move in the right direction. In future commentaries we will look at some of the initiatives under development.