US withdrawal from the Paris pact could be India's gain

Trump's decision unequivocally cedes the United States' global leadership

If US President Donald Trump’s refusal to re-affirm his country’s commitment to the crucial deterrence clause in the 68-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organisation signalled a significant shift in the post-World War II order, his decision to exit the Paris climate accord unequivocally cedes the United States’ global leadership. Commentators have pointed to the fact that the deleterious effects of Mr Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord, a key campaign promise linked to reviving coal-mining jobs, may be leavened by an extraordinary coalition, of 10 state governors, 187 mayors and many businesses, that has resolved to uphold the agreement’s target of limiting global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The fact that coal-mining jobs are being increasingly replaced by automation and that renewable energy is creating the jobs may blunt the president’s promises.

 
If the climate-change impact of this withdrawal is still being computed, the optics are unambiguous: The repudiation of a presidential executive order — as with the Kyoto Protocol, this treaty, too, was not ratified by the US Congress — in the international arena suggests that, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel pointed out, the US, the world’s most powerful democracy, can no longer be considered a reliable ally. Little surprise, authoritarian China, the world’s second-largest economy and second major carbon emitter, has capitalised. At the Davos summit this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke eloquently of the importance of globalisation, a dig at Mr Trump’s protectionism, and his government was the first to approach the European Union to reiterate its commitments under the Paris Accord after the US withdrew. Equally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments from Europe to stand by, if not exceed, the Paris accord have enhanced India’s status as a responsible country and the possibility of a closer alliance with China to lead the global commitment on climate change.

 
Mr Trump relied on discredited data to project India and China as enjoying more freedom than the US on carbon emissions. His statements ignore three facts. First, India’s emissions account for 5 per cent of the global total and its per capita emissions of two tonnes are one-tenth of the US’s 20 tonnes. Second, where China’s per capita emissions by 2030 are projected to be 14 tonnes (up from eight tonnes currently), India’s is not expected to exceed seven tonnes per capita even under the most pessimistic scenario. Third, the Modi government has been energetically engaged in meeting its commitment to get 40 per cent of its energy from renewable energy by 2030, which includes building 100 GW of solar energy by 2022, and he recently set a stiff target for nuclear power generation.

 

India, today, has become the largest solar market after China and Japan. Mr Trump’s statement that India is dependent on US finance for its clean energy programme is also incorrect. These have been entirely domestically funded with a coal cess, which has increased from Rs 50 a tonne to Rs 400 a tonne. Ironically, most of the Rs 54,000-crore clean energy fund remains unused. As of January, only half has been transferred to the Clean Environment Fund and only Rs 9,000 crore has been used to finance such projects. The Paris accord crisis, thus, could be India’s opportunity to accelerate its progress towards a clean energy economy.