Journal articles

Climate Policy

Energy Transitions

This collaborative article by experts from 24 Indian institutions explores India’s path to net zero by 2070 through 3 broad dimensions – ‘national and sub-national perspectives’, ‘sectoral and technological transitions’ and ‘enablers’. Aditya Valiathan Pillai wrote on climate institutions as a key enabler in the process. He examines how India has performed in building climate institutions, the challenges that lie in building them, and how we can create an effective institutional structure that differs from ones in countries that are past their emissions peak.

Opinions

Climate Policy

While it may be in the interests of developing countries to do development differently for climate reasons, the technological fact of falling renewable energy prices by no means imply a post-equity climate politics. But with weak prospects for a grand global bargain around climate and development, we may be in for messy country-by-country approaches to low-carbon development transitions.

Opinions

Climate Policy

The Ranjitsinh ruling of the Supreme Court is potentially far-reaching but its limited view of action on climate change risks causing an inadequate framing of policy. It is legislation that is built on a bottom-up approach that can act on the Court’s calls for balance across multiple objectives.

Books and book chapters

Climate Policy

Transforming towards a low-carbon, climate-resilient society will require reimagining existing governance arrangements. This chapter in ‘The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Natural Resources Law in India’ documents how India’s policies, institutions, and legal structures have changed in response to climate change.

Opinions

Climate Policy

Authors lay out an institutional vision for India’s climate law – knowledge-based ‘low-carbon development commission’; ‘climate cabinet’ to drive strategy; executive coordination body; and mechanisms for federal engagement.

Opinions

Climate Policy

Because India is still developing, is highly vulnerable, and yet to build much of its infrastructure, what the country needs is a law that enables progress toward both low-carbon and climate resilient development.

Opinions

Climate Policy

Policies that can usefully address climate change mitigation extend far beyond what an earlier literature defined as “mitigation policy”, which incorporates policy instrument design to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by means of, for instance, carbon tax, cap and trade, or border carbon adjustment. Instead, there is value in thinking much more expansively about climate policy: Effective “climate policy” may not always be “climate” policy.

Climate Policy

This Note is an expert perspective of the vision and key design elements of the Troika-led Mission 1.5 UNFCCC process in order to effectively address the significant gaps in action and support for transitioning to low-GHG and climate-resilient economies in line with the Paris Climate Agreement goals. It therefore contributes ideas to Mission 1.5’s design, as delegates and observers meet in Bonn in early June 2024 to advance climate negotiations.

SFC Perspectives

Adaptation and Resilience

Climate Policy

Energy Transitions

Environmental Governance and Policy

SFC Perspectives are intended to stimulate discussion by providing an overview of key issues and avenues for action to inform India’s sustainable development trajectory.