in climate talks, spotlight turns to india

8/9/2019 In climate talks, spotlight turns to India

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In Climate Talks, Spotlight Turnsto India

U.S.-China deal on carbon emissions ramps u ppressure on New Delhi to get more aggressive in

moving away from coal.A young boy in Ranchi, in Jharkhand state, India, carries a chunk o f coal into the mining campwhere he lives.PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBB KENDRICK, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

Wendy KochNational Geographic

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 25, 2014


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India's n ew prime minister, a Hindu nationalist and former tea seller, recently urged his country'sschoolchildren to help save the planet by r elishing the delight of a full moon.

"On a full moon night, if street lights are put off for two, three hours, will it not be service to theenvironment? Won't you enjoy the full moon night?" Narendra Modi said in September, adding: "We

have forgotten to live with nature." He urged kids t o switch off fans, lights, or appliances w hen notin use and turn off tap water when brushing teeth.

Modi, 64, has so unded at times like a climate activist. "Al Gore was right when he commented afew years a go that it was i nconvenient to many leaders t o hear, face and accept the naked truth ofglobal warming," Modi wrote in a 2011 e-book, Convenient Action, which heralded his cl imateefforts w hile chief minister of the western state of Gujarat.

So as a new round of international climate talks launches Monday in Lima, Peru, what role will

Modi's g overnment play? The United Nations m eeting will focus o n a n ew global accord, slated tobe nalized next year in Paris, to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions l inked to global warming.(See related map: "Four Ways to Look at Global Carbon Footprints.")

India, the world's third largest emitter of these gases, is under the spotlight because it is driving anuptick in global coal use and carbon emissions. China and the United States the w orld's t wobiggest emitters announced a deal on November 12 to curb such pollution by 2030. (See relatedstory: "Three Obstacles A head for U.S.-China Climate Deal.")

Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Party sw ept India's e lections i n May, also faces p ressure at home.By 2 022, he's p romised around-the-clock electricity for all Indians, more than one-quarter of whomnow lack such access. His g oal is d aunting: India, the world's se cond most populous c ountry, hasgrinding poverty, frequent power blackouts, and a heavy reliance on coal that's e xacerbating the airpollution choking its cities.

"India's w illing to make commitments t o its o wn people" but not to the world, says A lyssa Ayres,senior fellow and India expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank. "I would not expectany big shift in India's climate policy in the next year or two ... It's n ot ready to make bindinginternational commitments."

Even so, analysts ex pect India to make voluntary pledges to boost energy efficiency a nd renewablepower. It's well on its way t oward meeting a p ledge, made a t UN climate t alks in Copenhagen in2009, to cut the "intensity" o f its c arbon emissions reducing the amount of carbon emitted for thesame a mount of economic ou tput 20 to 25 percent over 2005 levels by 2 020.

A photo of a co al depot


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Workers i n a coal depot do backbreaking work for as l ittle as t wo dollars a day (U.S.).PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBB KENDRICK, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

Key Message: India Is Not China

Indian officials o ften note that their country's e conomy, although growing rapidly, is s till not asadvanced as C hina's, so its i nternational obligations s hould not be the same.

"India has t he largest number of poor people. Our i ncome levels a re several times l ower than thoseof China. There is n o way India could be asked to take the same kind of climate actions a s C hina,"Suresh Prabhu, an informal adviser to Modi on climate issues, told the Indian Express i n earlyNovember.

Indeed, there's a huge difference between the two Asian giants. While 6 percent of China'spopulation lived at the poverty level of $1.25 a day o r less in 2011, 25 percent of India's d id,according to World Bank d ata.


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"The burden of sustainability c annot be placed on the poor," Sumitra Mahajan, the speaker ofIndia's lower house of parliament, told the U nited Nations t his m onth. She agreed with Modi's p ushto promote frugality a nd respect for nature.

In India, where coal use is r ising, carbon dioxide emissions i ncreased more last year (5.1 percent)

than they did in China (4.2 percent) or the United States ( 2.9 percent). But on a per capita basis,India's ca rbon emissions p ale in comparison. India produces 1 .9 tons p er person, compared with7.2 for China and 16.4 for the United States.

The U.S.-China deal does n ot go nearly far enough to reduce global emissions, says C handraBhushan, head of the climate ch ange team for the Center for Science and Environment, a NewDelhi-based research and advocacy g roup. She says China's p ledge to halt the increase in itsemissions b y 2030 would freeze that nation at about 12 tons o f emissions p er person each year.

"In fact, if India were to follow the principles of this deal, then we need not do anything till 2040 andbeyond," Bhushan says i n a statement, adding that India's p er capita emissions w ould still be onlya fraction of China's in 15 years.

India's e nvironment minister, Prakash Javadekar, called the U.S.-China d eal a "go od b eginning" butsaid it is n ot "as a mbitious a s p eople wanted it to be." The United States p ledged to cut itsemissions b y 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels b y 2025.

"We are positively d isposed towards u sing our natural resources e fficiently," he said, echoingcomments he m ade in September before the UN Climate S ummit in New York. Modi, who plannedto visit Obama later that month in Washington, skipped the summit, angering environmentalists.

India's slogan is "Development Without Destruction," Javadekar said in the UN speech, noting hiscountry plans t o double its w ind energy ca pacity over the next ve years a nd improve the efficiencyof its c ars, appliances, and buildings. (See related photos: "India Power Outage Darkens C ities,Stops Trains.")

Even bolder, Modi's g overnment aims t o increase its u se of solar power by vefold. "We have reset

the targets o f renewable energy" from 20 gigawatts t o 100 gigawatts b y 2022, Energy MinisterPiyush Goyal said in m id-November. (See related story: "India's P ush for Renewable Energy: Is ItEnough?")

"He [Modi] is m oving at a pace that no other government in modern India history h as d one ... It'squite remarkable," says M anish Bapna, executive vice president of the World Resources I nstitute,an organization that focuses on sustainability issues.

India has b een at the forefront of developing clean energy technologies, striking a partnership withthe U.S. in 2009. During Modi's vi sit to Washington in late S eptember, the W hite House announced


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the two countries w ere expanding their efforts, including a new program to scale up renewableenergy's integration into India's power grid.

The Obama Administration also cleared the way for one billion dollars i n U.S. Export-Import Banknancing to help India buy American technology for clean-energy projects. On Friday, President

Barack Obama accepted Modi's i nvitation to visit India in January.

Bapna says technological advances c ould allow India to accelerate its p ath toward carbonreductions so it doesn't necessarily lag behind China's climate targets by 15 to 20 years.

"It's g oing to take time," Ayres says of India's s olar thrust. She says that although solar technologyhas potential, given the country's vast expanses of desert, it "isn't fully rolled out yet or beenconnected to the grid." She adds: "The big elephant in the room is co al."

Along with renewables, Modi's g overnment is p ushing coal, which now accounts f or 59 percent ofIndia's e lectric c apacity. It seeks t o lower coal imports a nd ramp up power supplies q uickly b ydoubling domestic p roduction to one billion tons b y 2019. (Vote and comment on how best to curbcities' air p ollution.)

Coal's a scent and the country's rapid economic development are polluting India's a ir. In May, theWorld Health Organization said the four cities w ith the dirtiest air worldwide led by N ew Delhi

are all in India's central region.

Ayres sa ys t his p ollution may spur grassroots o pposition to c oal. She says M odi cares p assionatelyabout his co untry a nd is t rying to spur economic g rowth in a clean way, adding: "He's t rying to walkthat tightrope."

in climate talks, spotlight turns to india

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