Shaping the Emerging World: India and the Multilateral Order

15. India's Energy, Food, and Water Security: International Cooperation for Domestic Capacity

281 Why Does Resource Security Matter for India? In recent years, higher and more volatile energy and food prices have pushed natural resources toward the top of the international agenda, while water scarcity is a growing threat to industry, agriculture, and energy generation. According to one estimate, by 2030 worldwide demand for food, water, and energy will grow approximately 35, 40, and 50 percent, respectively. At the same time, climate change will worsen the outlook for the availability of these critical resources.1 Food, water, energy, and climate change are policy domains that are enmeshed in a global economy that does not respect national or sectoral borders . Energy drives climate change, while climate limits energy options. Food and energy markets are tightly interlinked, while water is essential to food and energy production and is directly affected by a changing climate. All of these issues touch on other contentious international policy challenges such as trade, finance, and technology transfer. Thus the world must confront three interlocking challenges of sustainable development: securing energy, water, and other minerals to support economic growth; meeting basic needs for food, fuel, and water for a growing global population; and managing the environmental constraints and consequences of increased resource use. India’s development imperative places it at the forefront of these challenges . By 2050 there will be as many Indians—around 1.7 billion—as the population of the whole world at the beginning of the twentieth century.2 By some projections, the Indian economy will have grown by a factor of ten by mid-century.3 15 India’s Energy, Food, and Water Security: International Cooperation for Domestic Capacity arunabha ghosh and david steven 282 arunabha ghosh and david steven However, growth depends on securing access to energy and other strategic resources. India is already struggling to meet domestic demand for energy, food, and water and has 14 percent of the global population living without electricity and nearly a third of the global population cooking with traditional biofuels.4 It has little spare land or water and is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change.5 Over the coming decades, these challenges will intensify. Given the speed of both its population and economic growth, India faces some hard resource limits in the years ahead. However, its major problems are a product of the intersection of dysfunctional markets and governance systems for natural resources. Energy and food subsidies are increasingly fiscally unsustainable.6 And political gridlock continues to reduce the prospects of an effective domestic response to resource pressures.7 India is, of course, only partially in control of its destiny in this area, especially during periods when commodity prices are high and volatile. It is already exposed to global energy markets and will have increasing exposure to international food systems.8 It shares climate and water risks with Bangladesh, Pakistan, and other neighbors. International drivers will frame India’s options at home, while effective domestic policy will make it easier for the Indian government to assert its interests on the international stage. Conversely , an increasingly competitive international dynamic—on resource nationalism, export bans, trade in commodities, or policy toward major energy exporters such as Iran—could create a growing, and dangerous, sense of isolation and constriction within India. India,therefore,has an especially strong national interest in well-functioning commodity markets. As it becomes an increasingly assertive international actor, its willingness to work with other major powers on energy, food, water, and climate could significantly improve the prospects for effective management of these issues. Its growing presence as a“rule shaper”and its willingness to engage on a multilateral, rather than solely a bilateral, basis offer it potential to influence the design of robust international regimes for resource security and the provision of global environmental public goods. It will find, however, that existing regimes and their underlying rules often offer contradictory policy signals. Thus India could play an important role in developing governance frameworks that increase the coherence of rules across institutional regimes relating to resources, the environment, trade, and security.9 In this chapter, we review the resource and environmental challenges facing India over the next twenty years, focusing in particular on their political and geopolitical dimensions. We then discuss drivers of change and possible trajectories for India’s domestic and international policy on these issues. Finally, we discuss options for future Indian engagement on strategic...