ASEAN-India-Australia: Towards Closer Engagement in a New Asia

10. Indian Perspectives on Climate Change

10 IndIan PersPectIves on clImate change T.P. Singh and Sharai Lewis-Gruss In India, the debate surrounding climate change centres around the need for the country to eradicate poverty and provide basic necessities for its citizens, while simultaneously deliberating on the need for the country to curb emissions voluntarily through the use of new and efficient technologies. Accordingly, while India commits to take responsibility for its current greenhouse gas emissions and takes steps to reduce them, its international negotiation position is based on the principles of historical responsibility. With the developed world responsible for 70–80 per cent of the current stock of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it is not hard to understand this position. The question that is often asked is “should the peoples of the developing countries like India be asked to forego their quest for their basic necessities and needs, merely because the developed and affluent countries have over the years degraded the atmosphere in pursuit of affluence and luxury?”1 Nevertheless, as the discussions for the post 2012 Kyoto regime progress, pressure is bound to build on the emerging economies of China, India, and others to take up time bound emission reduction targets. In 1995, developing countries contributed 27 per cent of the total world emissions. It was estimated that by 2035, they will be contributing 50 per cent.The indications, however, are that this will happen sooner rather than later as China alone is now releasing 24 per cent of global greenhouse gases and has overtaken the 172 Indian Perspectives on Climate Change 173 United States as the world’s largest emitter.2 With Indonesia quickly jumping to third place, India is now the world’s fifth largest emitter.3 Under pressure for increasing emissions due to sustained industrialization, India’s stand on carbon emissions can be summed up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s commitment at the last G8 summit at Heiligendamm: “India is prepared to commit that our per capita carbon emissions will never exceed the average per capita emissions of developed industrial countries. Moreover, as developed countries take measures to bring down their per capita carbon emissions, our threshold would come down too”.4 Accordingly, the Indian Government is promoting the concept of convergence of per capita emissions, whereby developed countries are asked to bring down their emissions as developing countries make a conscious effort not to increase their per capita emissions to that of developed countries levels. The European Union has recently come up with an ambitious and aggressive plan that looks at levying a carbon tax on the products coming from major developing countries that are not obliged by the Kyoto protocol to reduce emissions. This is being proposed as a type of tariff which will, supposedly, provide a level playing field for the products coming from developed countries that are required to reduce their emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. India has characterized this as a protectionist measure to please labour unions of developed countries. Its representative at the World Trade Organization, Ujal Singh Bhatia, warned that retaliation will occur if such tariffs are imposed.5 On the issue of imposing stricter standards for developing nations, Prime Minister Singh says, “We cannot continue with a global development model in which some countries continue to maintain high carbon emissions, while the development options available for developing countries get constrained”.6 India’s stance on climate change and development represents that of many developing nations that seek to aid in mitigating climate change, but have development at the forefront of their agendas. There is a greater understanding today of the threat of climate change to humankind. It will, however, still be a challenge for the U.N. negotiating process in Copenhagen in 2009 to culminate with a global deal that would ensure global emissions peak by 2020 at the 1990 levels. What this entails is a bold commitment by developing countries to cut emissions in the order of 25–40 per cent. It is expected, therefore, that pressure will build on developing countries to accept caps on their emissions. The two aims, development and national measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions, may not be mutually exclusive. India’s agricultural sector, on which depends the livelihood of the majority of its population, is vulnerable 174 T.P. Singh and Sharai Lewis-Gruss to the impacts of climate change. Sea level rise has...