Climate agreements and India: aligning options and opportunities on a new track

• Published in: International environmental agreements : politics, law and economics Vol. 11; no. 3; pp. 229 - 243
• Main Authors: Shukla, P. R., Dhar, Subash
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.09.2011; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Agreements; Alignment; BASIC (programming language); Brazil; Carbon; Climate; Climate action; Climate change; Climate change mitigation; Conflict; Developing countries; Development Policy; Domestic; Earth and Environmental Science; Emissions; Emissions control; Energy; Energy Policy; Energy security; Environment; Environmental Economics; Environmental Law/Policy/Ecojustice; Environmental Management; Environmental regulations; Global climate; Goals; India; International agreements; LDCs; Nature Conservation; Negotiation; Negotiations; Original Paper; Peoples Republic of China; Per capita; Policies; Political Science; Studies; Sustainable Development; India; Brazil; South Africa; Denmark, Copenhagen; China, People's Rep; Mitigation options; Scenario modeling; Climate agreement; Sustainable development
• ISSN: 1567-9764; 1573-1553
• DOI: 10.1007/s10784-011-9158-6

The Climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009 witnessed the emerging power of Brazil, South Africa, India, and China (BASIC). Although still focussed on domestic development goals, BASIC countries have made important steps toward a greater engagement in the global climate agenda. For India, the shift was marked by a voluntary, but conditional, target of reducing emission intensity, away from the past normative position based on “equal per capita,” emissions entitlements. The new track aims at finding cost-effective mitigation strategies that align national development goals and climate actions. This paper examines the mitigation potential of a domestic sustainable development policy using a suite of integrated assessment models. The long-term goal is to keep temperature increase below 2°C. This article shows that it is possible to match domestic development goals and climate mitigation. Win–win options exist and side benefits—in terms of energy security and local pollution—are important. However, development policies are not sufficient to achieve the desired emissions reductions. We find that it is necessary to introduce a constraint on the carbon budget. The price of carbon that emerges is however much lower than in a conventional mitigation scenario. Finally, this paper proposes to shift the negotiations away from the current climate-centric focus toward “development,” in order to reduce conflicts and deliver greater global and national benefits.