 "India to ratify Paris Agreement: The landmark climate change deal's journey under Modi govt")
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday announced that India would ratify the Paris Agreement on October 2.
Modi's announcement came after uncertainty had clouded the fate of the deal, at least in terms of India's climate change commitments, since the government had attempted to link the success of India's climate change efforts to membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
To cut down its emissions, India has pledged to increase its clean energy share – solar and wind – by 40 per cent by 2022 to 175 Gw. Its solar programme – aimed to achieve 100 Gw by 2022 – is one of the fastest growing in the world.
Here is how the agreement, hailed as a landmark achievement in December last year, has had a bumpy ride towards ratification in India.
Domestic compulsions
Also Read
As reported earlier, in June this year, the India-US joint statement on climate change issued during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington, did not include any commitment by either country to formally ratify the Paris Agreement by the end of 2016.
According to the report, during the negotiations between the two countries before Prime Minister Modi landed in Washington, the US had insisted that India should formally commit to joining the agreement by 2016-end. The report added that India stopped short of such a commitment in the joint statement.
At that time, the stated reason for this lack of a clear commitment on the part of both countries was attributed to domestic compulsions.
Linking the agreement to NSG membership
As India faced resistance in in its bid to secure NSG membership, on June 19, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, as reported earlier, has said that India's membership to the NSG this year was important in order for the country in order to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement. The commitment in question was that India would secure 40 per cent of its power capacity in 2030 through clean sources, with a third of that capacity coming from nuclear power.
Once the bid failed, on June 24, the Ministry of External Affairs had said, “An early positive decision by the NSG would have allowed us to move forward on the Paris Agreement.”
Writing for the Business Standard at that time, Nitin Sethi had argued: "...Going by actual internal projections the government used to make its commitments under the global climate pact, nuclear power was estimated to be even lower, constituting 3.91 per cent of India’s clean power portfolio by 2030."
The report said that given the figures and the low share of nuclear power in India's future clean energy mix, under the agreement, such a linkage was questionable and perhaps exaggerated.
Movement in August
The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change set up five inter-ministerial groups, which would outline the changes in schemes, programmes and laws required for the country to achieve its greenhouse gas emission intensity reduction targets under the Paris Agreement.
With the groups being constituted in August, they are expected to present their reports by the end of the year.
India not ready yet
With the attempt to link the success of the country's commitments under the Paris Agreement with its membership to the NSG not bearing fruit, in September, India cited domestic issues as a hurdle for ratification.
During the G20 meet in Hangzhou, China, in the first week of September, India told the G20 grouping that it was not ready to ratify the Paris Agreement before 2016.
"We are not quite ready yet in terms of domestic actions that are required to ratify or at least to commit to ratify within 2016," Arvind Panagariya, India's Sherpa (representative) to the G20, had said.
India's statements came even as both China and the US ratified the Paris Agreement on the eve of the G20 meet.
In fact, according to The Indian Express, India's refusal to commit itself to ratifying the Paris Agreement by December 2016 in the G20 communique in Hangzhou was meant as a snub to the summit's host, China, for having blocked India’s entry into the NSG.
Reversing positions
With Prime Minister Modi's announcement during his Saturday speech in Kozhikode, in Kerala, where he addressed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers and leaders who had gathered for the three-day BJP Conclave, the agreement is now all set to be ratified despite previous flip flops.
Writing for the Business Standard, Nitin Sethi explained: "The agreement requires 55 countries accounting for 55 per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions to ratify in order for the pact to come into force. 60 countries adding up to 48 per cent emissions have already done so and both the necessary thresholds would have been crossed by countries by October leaving India behind — risking global opprobrium. The annual climate negotiations are to begin on November 7 and an informal meeting of environment ministers is planned for October — both in Morocco."