Climate Change

The Climate Action Network South Asia acknowledges India’s INDC but hopes for more: “India has a unique opportunity to lead by example and increase its ambition to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.”

For Samir Saran, vice-president of the influential think-tank Observer Research Foundation, India has every right to use the carbon space freed by the developed world without restrictions.

India’s strategy at the Paris Climate Change summit will be to work with emerging economies and press the developed world to concede that responsibility for cutting carbon emissions after 2020 cannot be shared equally by rich and poor nations.

Sunita Narain, head of the influential environmental think-tank Centre for Science and Environment, fears that Paris will break down the “firewall” between countries responsible for climate change and the developing world.

In an interview a month before the COP, Prakash Javadekar, India’s minister for the environment, stands his ground on India’s right to develop, and to emit: “If someone is putting restrictions on India or any developing country it is unacceptable.”

Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Advisor to Prime Minister Modi, also sees no alternative for India’s using coal. But he wants the world to think big and advocates a massive research effort to make “clean coal” possible.

For Shyam Saran, a former foreign secretary and Indian special envoy on climate change, any restrictions on India’s use of coal would be unacceptable.

Raja Mohan, a senior journalist and columnist of the Indian Express, judges Prime Minister Modi’s stress of joint responsibility as “an important shift in India’s climate diplomacy”.

"The entire world is worried about climate change, global warming, and it is being debated and discussed everywhere. This is everyone’s responsibility and also concern” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his radio broadcast just before leaving for Paris.

Two independent experts from the Centre for Policy Research-Namati Environment Justice Program (New Delhi) explain one of the critical issues within the INDCs.