Amisha Yadav @CCMS Bureau
On November 14, India submitted its long-term strategy to move towards low carbon development to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC).
The report titled ‘India’s Long Term Low Carbon Development Strategy’ has been produced by the Ministry of Environment,
Forest and Climate Change. It was launched by Union Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav at the India pavilion.
The strategies include implementing low carbon measures in electricity systems but in a way that is consistent with development, and developing an “integrated, efficient, inclusive, low carbon” transport system. The strategies will promote adaptation measures in urban design, energy and material efficiency in buildings, while also considering carbon dioxide removal and related engineering solutions. They aim to decouple emissions from growth, and develop a lowemission industrial system.
The strategies will also include moves to enhance forest and vegetation cover but by taking into account socio economic and ecological considerations as well.
As per the report, the listed long- term strategies have been developed by taking into account India’s low historic contributions toward global warming, the high energy needs of the country, national circumstances as it pertains to committing to lowemission growth strategies, and the need to build climate resilience.
“The framing of a long term strategy for low emission development by the Government of India and its public release at COP27 is significant as it closely follows the announcement of net zero goals by India’s PM in Glasgow last year,” said RR Rashmi, distinguished fellow at The Energy Re- source Institute (TERI).
“What is required now is to main- stream this strategy in the overall development plan of the country and develop a roadmap for targeted transition of each identified sector within a specific time frame. This will give it implementability and make it more monitorable from a national point of view.”
India’s long-term strategies should be “viewed as a living document”, according to Navroz K. Dubash of the Centre for Policy Research.
“Future iterations should emphasize robust and transparent modelling towards net-zero by 2070, clearer identification of sectoral co-benefits and trade offs, and more detailed discussion with states,” he said.
The Ministerial High-Level Round- table on Pre-2030 Ambition, which aims to set the global direction on mitigation ambition and implementation that should be taken before 2030, took place on November 14.
However, pre-2030 “must be clarified”, and it cannot begin at 2020, said India’s Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, intervening at the roundtable. “How far back does pre-2030 go? In our view, pre2030 in this sense is no different from pre 2020,” he said.
Historical cumulative emissions are crucial and therefore pre-2020 responsibility, and whether pre-2020 commitments have been fulfilled, must be taken into consideration too, he said.
All parties have differing ambitions when it comes to climate commitments, which must be recognised, Yadav said, placing the onus on developed countries to take the lead here. Time, human
and financial resources and sustained economic growth are not ‘barriers’ to climate ambitions, instead they are required for low carbon development to be achieved.
The kind of increased effort that is required on the part of developed countries is not happening, and developing countries are being asked to be more ambitious. If ambition is thus “forced”, growth will be restricted.
Yadav added that India will continue to use its fossil fuel resources to protect energy security.
“Support for just transition means increased support for the deployment of renewables, increased support for the development of renewable technologies and means to cope with the costs of such development and the deployment of such technologies.”
Yadav also reiterated India’s stand on the need for a clear definition of climate finance, which several other countries too have called for, in the High Level Ministerial Dialogue on Climate Finance conducted on November 14.
