The Union Cabinet's ratification of the Paris agreement on climate change on Wednesday followed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement earlier this week that the country would submit its instrument of ratification to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on October 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The Paris agreement will come into force when at least 55 countries - accounting for 55 per cent of the world's emissions - ratify the treaty. It has become clear that, with or without India, this threshold will be met. So the government's decision to ratify the agreement is a smart turnaround. It had hoped, perhaps, to play hardball with the United States and China - both countries have ratified the pact recently - on the issue. India would have liked to use ratification as a pawn in its attempt to get into the Nuclear Suppliers Group - indicating, correctly, that its attempt to build a low-carbon economy depended crucially on secure access to atomic energy. However, any attempt to use the ratification as a bargaining counter would have been stillborn, given that the 55 per cent emissions threshold is now almost certain to be met by the end of the year. Thus the government has shown wisdom in reorienting its approach towards the treaty.
Mr Modi packaged India's acceptance of the Paris programme in some intelligent politics. He first name-checked Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, one of the icons of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh - the forerunner of the Bharatiya Janata Party - by saying that Upadhyaya had always emphasised living in harmony with nature. He also emphasised that he had chosen October 2 because Gandhi's life was an example of minimum carbon footprint, a reference to the sustainable lifestyle advocated by the Father of the Nation. Placing India's commitment to carbon change in the context of Indian political history is a wise move. After all, this effort will take many years, and will require cross-party effort and consensus as well as cooperation from the public. India's climate change targets are ambitious. The national action plan on climate change goes much further than a country at India's level of development should have been expected to field. It intends to raise the mix of energy derived from sources other than fossil fuels to 40 per cent by 2030. This will require massive augmentation in wind and solar power capacity. It will also require restarting several hydroelectric energy projects, although this mode of generation has fallen out of favour.
The real challenge for India lies in upgrading the manufacturing sector and its existing thermal power plants. These two sectors will have to be made cleaner. But this is an expensive process and will significantly raise costs both for industry as well as the broader economy, an unenviable task at a time when the government is attempting to revive domestic manufacturing and make it competitive in order to generate jobs. The bitter truth is that India will fail to meet its Paris commitments unless these sectors are made cleaner. Thus climate diplomacy from India cannot end with the ratification of the Paris treaty. Technology and fund transfers are essential if these sectors are to be made greener, and the treaty conditions honoured. That must now become the focus of the government.
