Focus ‘will be on climate’ as New Delhi takes G20 chair
Analysts say country will seek to boost its green credentials and push for aid from rich nations
India has officially taken up its role as chair of the Group of 20 leading economies for the coming year and is putting climate at the top of the group’s priorities.
Programmes to encourage sustainable living and money for countries to transition to clean energy and deal with the effects of a warming world are some of the key areas that India will focus on during its presidency, experts say. Some say India will also use its new position to boost its climate credentials and act as a bridge between the interests of industrialised and developing nations.
The country has made considerable moves toward its climate goals in recent years but is currently one of the world’s top emitters of planet-warming gases.
The G20, made up of the world’s largest economies, has a rolling presidency with a different member state in charge of the group’s agenda and priorities each year. Experts believe India will use the “big stage” of the G20 presidency to drive forward its climate and development plans.
The country “will focus heavily on responding to the current and future challenges posed by climate change,” said Samir Sarin, president of the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank.
Sarin said India would work to ensure that money was flowing from rich industrialised nations to emerging economies to help them combat global warming
It would also use the presidency to push its flagship “Mission Life” programme that encourages more sustainable lifestyles in the country, he said.
The impact of lifestyle “has not received as much attention in the global discourse as it should,” said RR Rashmi, a distinguished fellow at The Energy Research Institute in New Delhi. He added that the issue “may get some prominence” at the G20, which would be a success for the Indian government, but critics say the focus on lifestyle changes must be backed by policy to have credibility.
India has been strengthening its climate credentials, with its recent domestic targets to transition to renewable energy more ambitious than the goals it submitted to the UN as part of the Paris Agreement – which requires countries to show how they plan to limit warming to temperature targets set in 2015.
Many of India’s big industrialists are investing heavily in renewable energy domestically as well as globally, but the Indian government is also preparing to invest in coal-based power plants at the cost of US$33 billion over the next four years.
At the UN climate conference last month, India – currently the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases – proposed a phase-out of all fossil fuels and repeatedly emphasised the need to revamp global climate finance. The country says it cannot reach its climate goals and reduce carbon dioxide emissions without significantly more finance from richer nations, a claim those countries dispute.
Navroz Dubash, professor at Indian think tank the Centre for Policy Research, said that a key question for many countries was how “emerging economies address development needs and do it in a low carbon pathway” with several in the global south, like India, pointing to a need for outside investment.
As the chair of the G20, India is a good position “to say what it will take for us to develop in ways that don’t lock up the remaining carbon budget,” Dubash added, referring to the amount of carbon dioxide the world can emit while still containing global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels.
Some experts say more than US$2 trillion is needed each year by 2030 to help developing countries cut emissions and deal with the effects of a warming climate, with US$1 trillion from domestic sources and the rest coming from external sources such as developed countries or multilateral development banks.
[India] will focus heavily on responding to the current and future challenges posed by climate change
SAMIR SARIN, ANALYST