Shaping the Emerging World: India and the Multilateral Order

14. Of Maps and Compasses: India in Multilateral Climate Negotiations

261 Introduction India has taken a remarkably consistent approach to global climate negotiations : a principled position on climate change founded on attention to equity dimensions of the problem. This stance, which is the setting on a metaphorical compass that has guided the last two decades of Indian climate policy, has strong implications for India’s arguments for the relative mitigation burdens of the industrialized and developing world and therefore for India’s approach to multilateralism applied to climate change. Rooted in ethical claims, this view has served Indian interests well in staving off pressures for premature mitigation commitments and placing the emphasis for mitigation action on industrialized countries. However, the geopolitical terrain has shifted considerably over the last two decades. A more definitive science of climate change, growing alarm among vulnerable nations, an ascendant Asia, and a struggling West all have implications for how India should strategize to achieve its goals in climate negotiations and climate policy more generally. This new context, this chapter suggests, calls for updated cartography, even as the compass setting remains valid.With an updated map, India’s climate journey may no longer traverse a straight line, even though the overall direction remains the same. In this chapter, I seek to explain the reasons for the persistence and continued validity of India’s climate compass setting but also argue for rethinking our map of climate diplomacy. The chapter begins with a discussion of exactly why climate multilateralism is such a challenging task. There is good reason why India, like many other countries, has struggled to deal with the complexities of global climate politics. 14 Of Maps and Compasses: India in Multilateral Climate Negotiations navroz k. dubash 262 navroz k. dubash I then review in brief the trajectory of Indian climate policy, focusing on international positions but also tracing the growing significance of domestic climate policy. The third section seeks to interpret recent positions and strategies adopted by India, drawing on a growing literature. I conclude by expanding on the theme of an Indian climate position in a changed global context. The Challenges of Climate Multilateralism After two decades of effort at multilateral coordination on climate change, greenhouse gas emissions are relentlessly rising; it is hard to claim even moderate success on international cooperation to limit climate change.1 The roots of this failure lie in at least five underlying characteristics of the climate challenge : the scale and scope of adjustment, the challenges of complexity and communication, the need to trespass across policy silos, the porosity of international and national categories of action, and uncertainty about who will bear the costs of climate change. First, the scale and scope of the climate challenge are unprecedented.Addressing climate change requires nothing less than reversing the entrenched pattern of industrialization built around accessing and using fossil fuels.The United Nations Environment Program estimates that in order to keep global average temperature increase to below 2° Celsius (the minimum threshold considered safe by science), global greenhouse gas emissions would have to peak well before 2020, and carbon dioxide emissions from industry and energy would have to decline at the rate of about 3 percent a year until 2050.2 To put the latter figure in perspective, a 3 percent rate of decline in emissions translates to about a 6 percent rate of decarbonization— gross domestic product (GDP) per unit of carbon—with a GDP growth rate of 3 percent.3 All of this would have to be accomplished in a world where developing countries legitimately assert the right to develop and grow in the most cost-effective way, which currently is a pathway dependent on the use of fossil fuels. In short, addressing climate change requires completely reengineering industrial development and reconceptualizing industrial society. Second, the complexity of climate science and the challenge of communicating about climate change exacerbate the problems of building domestic political consensus for action and impede the construction of a common narrative around which to negotiate global action. The challenge begins with the complexity of climate science,which operates on carefully calibrated statements of probability—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses statements such as “high agreement, much evidence” to indicate the extent of evidence and agreement among experts on the causes of and mechanisms to address climate change.4 But, in addition, as Hulme notes, different attitudes to risk and technology, different perspectives on what is “fair,” different interpretations of what constitutes...