Since India delayed an announcement on its future carbon emissions cuts at the end of August, there has been a lot of talk about a possible shift in climate change policy by New Delhi.
Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the Left Wing Communist Party of India (Marxist) said Narendra Modi is reneging on the “red lines” drawn by previous governments in U.N. climate change talks.
These red lines, according to Yechury, require New Delhi to refrain from announcing unilateral commitments or accepting any binding emissions cuts, and insisting on the developed world fulfilling its pledges to transfer climate finance and low-carbon technology to developing countries like India without intellectual property rights payments.
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As opposed to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, India could lead a campaign for climate-responsible international development cooperation, shifting from coal to renewables domestically and promoting the values of the International Solar Alliance globally.
Using a progressive environmental security concept can help to tackle a range of environmental issues related to armed conflict, such as deforestation, loss of biodiversity, tensions over natural resources, conflict pollution, and damage to ecosystems. The environment can actually play a role in peacebuilding. This article briefly outlines why such an inclusive and environmental protection approach is needed and how it could be implemented.
Climate action and free trade have been perceived as contrary agendas for a long time. Despite more and more governments seeing tremendous potential for win-win outcomes, aligning trade and climate has become harder. This is due to changes in our current geopolitical landscape, as Christian Hübner explains in light of the upcoming G20 summit.
Human activity has caused the temperature of the Earth and its atmosphere to rise by about 1°C above pre-industrial levels, triggering fundamental changes to the planet’s physical and social landscapes. On 8 October an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that temperatures were rising faster than expected, and that 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels could occur as early as 2030.