Issue Brief

Climate Policy

An overview of key issues to watch in discussions on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), including the role and relevance of the NCQG, strategies for effective implementation, and implications of the outcome for broader climate diplomacy.

Reports

Climate Policy

Energy Transitions

As India aims to further ramp up the pace of its RE deployment, both large- and small-scale, this brief, published in collaboration with DIW Berlin, analyzes challenges to it from regulatory, institutional mandate, coordination and market development angles, and explores ways to address them.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

Four key issues to consider for effectively implementing an airshed-level approach to air quality management: development of robust knowledge systems; appropriate institutional structures; clear powers and functions of the airshed authority; and accountability mechanisms.

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.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

Explainer on PM 2.5, how the particles are formed, their health impacts, and methods for controlling PM 2.5 emissions.

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.

Books and book chapters

Environmental Governance and Policy

This chapter in ‘The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Natural Resources Law in India’ unpacks the key components of air quality regulation in India. It provides an overview of the regulatory and institutional framework that governs some of the major sources of air pollution in the country, focusing primarily on national laws and policies.

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.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

Even levels of air pollution below current Indian air quality standards lead to increased daily mortality rates in India. It finds that across 10 cities in the country (Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Shimla and Varanasi), ~33,000 deaths per year can be attributed to air pollution levels that are above the WHO guidelines. Significant number of deaths were observed even in cities not considered to have high air pollution, such as Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Chennai.

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

Adaptation and Resilience

The recent spate of deadly heatwaves highlights the need for long-term systemic solutions, which come with a hefty price tag. Here’s how India can foot the bill.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

Environmental Governance and Policy

The combined impact of air pollution and heatwaves can be far more severe than individual impacts, as various reactions between heat and gases in the air can affect cardiovascular, respiratory and immune systems. Adopting unified protective health measures against both issues is crucial.

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.

Reports

Energy Transitions

This study aims to understand the energy transition preparedness of the buildings sector of 10 states in India and highlights good examples from the states.

Books and book chapters

Adaptation and Resilience

Environmental Governance and Policy

The chapter, published in the book ‘The Climate-Health-Sustainability Nexus: Understanding the Interconnected Impact on Populations and the Environment’ (Springer), examines the combined influence of heat and air pollution their implications for global health and the economy.

Reports

Environmental Governance and Policy

The chapter in the report ‘The Air We Share: Towards Reduced Transboundary Air Pollution across India and Pakistan’ looks at crop residue burning in India and Pakistan, presenting several sustainable solutions – shifting focus away from paddy and wheat towards other crops, coordinating across multiple stakeholders, etc.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

Climate won’t be a major issue in India’s upcoming six-week-long national election, unlike in Australia, the UK, and US, where elections can hinge on climate policy positions. But it will shape Indian elections in definitive but under-the-radar ways.

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.

SFC Perspectives

Adaptation and Resilience

The scale and complexity of the climate challenge merits serious consideration of systemic change, and a re-examination of what is needed for economy and society to thrive in an era of frequent, and often ravaging, climate impacts.

SFC Perspectives

Energy Transitions

Our research and engagements at SFC focus on rethinking the configuration of technology, politics and institutions in Indian energy as a necessary complement to techno-economic solutions for enabling the transition.

SFC Perspectives

Climate Policy

The Climate Policy group within SFC approaches policy challenges through a strategic lens, aiming for long-term structural change by shifting discourse, building stronger institutions, and aligning conditions for implementation.

SFC Perspectives

Environmental Governance and Policy

We, at SFC, view reducing air pollution not only as a technical challenge, but also as a structural one that requires re-thinking our approach and the institutions that are tasked with addressing it.

Journal articles

Adaptation and Resilience

Environmental Governance and Policy

The authors found strong evidence of heatwave impacts on daily mortality. Longer and more intense heatwaves were linked to an increased mortality risk, however, resulted in a lower burden of heatwave-related deaths.

Opinions

Climate Policy

In countries where politics are embedded in local development concerns such as job creation or environmental issues, an enabling approach to climate law may work better than a purely regulatory approach.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

This paper explores which combination of technology-push and demand-pull policies best situates a country to lead in clean energy innovation, as new or dominant designs emerge and replace older technologies. A new analytical framework for green industrial policy is applied to BEV drivetrain technology to examine the use of policy alignment and misalignment by countries with big automakers as they pursue strategic green industrial policy.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

It absolves educational institutions and government agencies of their responsibility towards ensuring clean air while hampering learning outcomes.

Opinions

Climate Policy

The first Global Stocktake (GST) confirms that progress in reducing emissions is well behind what is required to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. What is to be done?

Books and book chapters

Energy Transitions

Taking as an example the Talcher coalfields in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, the chapter shows how uneven and combined development has led to the fragmentation of the local labour forces along the way.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

There is a pattern of natural disasters in the Himalayas, which leaves the local population caught in a cycle of construction and destruction.

Opinions

Climate Policy

Fossil fuels should be used sparingly, in the areas where they contribute most to human welfare.

Opinions

Climate Policy

Recent analysis has found that the finance that developed countries are reporting towards that USD 100 billion targets is not always going towards clear climate purposes – some of the projects that have been included in their reporting were a coal plant, a hotel expansion, chocolate stores, a movie, and an airport expansion.

Books and book chapters

Environmental Governance and Policy

The book studies how environmental protection is embedded in the political systems by comparing industrialized countries and emerging economies. It brings froward how concrete environmental policy emerges from a complex interplay of mass media and political conflicts.

Books and book chapters

Environmental Governance and Policy

This chapter examines the concept and practice of environmental governance in India. It argues that balance in the environment-development trade-off is necessary to meet growth objectives and that enforcement measures do not necessarily obstruct the growth.

Opinions

Energy Transitions

States are critical actors in India’s energy transition as there is a multi-tier governance of energy production and usage.

Opinions

Climate Policy

India’s Long Term Low Emissions Development Strategy (LT-LEDS) sets out multiple low-carbon transitions, highlighting that climate action will be intimately tied to developmental processes.This article identifies some of the challenges and opportunities embedded within these transitions, and reflects on how these will impact developmental priorities such as employment and energy security.

Journal articles

Energy Transitions

In coal mining districts, the nature of labour dependence on working coal may change over time, but generations will continue to rely on the industry for their livelihoods. This leaves coal communities extremely vulnerable to an energy transition.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

India’s recent heat deaths are not outliers. They signal a dismal future unless we start taking the urgent threat of heat seriously.

Books and book chapters

Adaptation and Resilience

The chapter puts forward a synthetic account of the forces shaping climate governance in India’s federal architecture, building on descriptions of environmental federalism; state actions in climate policy; and several recent policy moves by both the Centre and states.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

​​The Indian government’s primary policy response to the life-threatening heat comes in the form of “heat action plans”. These plans urge a healthy mix of different solution types but most plans do not account for local context, are underfunded and are poor at identifying and targeting vulnerable groups.

Opinions

Climate Policy

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR6 synthesis report is a sobering account of present and future damages to ecosystems.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

The paper reviews the influence of Delhi’s urban growth since 1990 on pollution levels and sources and the evolution of technical, institutional, and legal measures to control emissions in the National Capital Region of Delhi.

Journal articles

Energy Transitions

This study examines Solar Rooftop Systems (SRS) on Delhi’s outskirts. It reveals how current policies miss the mark by not emphasizing the need for a more integrated approach to urban energy planning that transcends the rural-urban divide.

Opinions

Climate Policy

India took on a key position on the world stage by assuming the presidency of G20. This year, India will aim to provide leadership to a group of countries that comprises 85% of the world’s GDP and 60% of its population. India must use its presidency to push for greater cooperation to combat complex climate issues.

Opinions

Energy Transitions

India’s G-20 presidency is an opportunity for New Delhi to negotiate a deal for itself while also shaping international cooperation on just energy transitions.

Opinions

Climate Policy

The market must work in sync with a range of policy instruments. Stable institutional and regulatory structures must balance competing interests and trade-offs to ensure optimum coverage, caps, pricing and reporting.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

With high water usage, questionable water quality and health risks, these methods have, at best, limited effects.

Opinions

Climate Policy

2023 should be the year climate change is mainstreamed into India’s development decisions.

Journal articles

Energy Transitions

This paper delves into the coalfields of eastern India, highlighting the emergence of multiple, fragmented and hierarchical ‘classes of labour’ in the ‘new public sector’ coal mines of India.

Opinions

Climate Policy

With the new Loss and Damage fund, the line between victim and perpetrator has been blurred

Opinions

Climate Policy

COP27 will be marked for the loss and damage fund and stalled steps on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But the time has arrived to focus on what nations are doing at home, not global meets.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

Health must be turned into a feature and eventually a function of air pollution policy

Opinions

Climate Policy

Addressing climate change through policy may not be enough. Legislation around climate can ensure economy-wide outcomes. Broader political context will also need to be considered, in India as in the rest of the world, while drawing laws to ensure that both environmental and development objectives are met.

Opinions

Climate Policy

Starting with a governance functions approach – identifying the problems to be solved – allows legal reform to be tailored to disparate national contexts.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

As India takes over the G20 presidency in December, LiFE offers a platform to promote individual-led demand-side interventions on the international stage.

Opinions

Climate Policy

As climate change becomes an increasing concern, addressing the problem only through policy may not be enough. In this piece, Dubash and Sridhar suggest that legislation around climate can ensure economy-wide outcomes, and put forth nine considerations that countries hoping to implement climate law should satisfy to effectively tackle climate change.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

As key environmental indicators worsen across India, it is clear that State Pollution Control Boards and Pollution Control Committees are falling short in meeting their statutory mandate

Opinions

Climate Policy

For the annual climate meet to facilitate action across the developed and developing world and enhance equity, North-South tensions on loss and damage as well as finance need redressal

Opinions

Climate Policy

As COP27 approaches, the spotlight once again turns to building a compelling national narrative around climate change – based on what India can do and what India needs.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

The boards were envisioned as autonomous entities, and strong political will coupled with bureaucratic support is required to realise this vision, even if it constrains the government’s (other) policy objectives.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

The issue of crop stubble burning cannot be addressed in a silo and using short-term, unsustainable solutions

Opinions

Climate Policy

The creation of a national carbon market in India, depending on its institutional setup, policy integration and design could offer a mechanism to reduce emissions – or it could result in serious economic costs. The authors here put forth seven key considerations for its design – including India’s growth objectives, trade balance, fiscal revenues, and the effect on its MSMEs.

Opinions

Climate Policy

The creation of a national carbon market in India, depending on its institutional setup, policy integration, and design could offer a mechanism for reducing emissions, or it could result in serious economic costs.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

Adaptation is best seen as a long-term anti-poverty measure whose policy relevance grows as the zone of climate vulnerability expands on the Indian map

Opinions

Climate Policy

For a climate-sensitive development plan, India must walk a line between the ‘development-first climate-later’ view and the ‘untrammelled opportunity’ view

Opinions

Energy Transitions

A technological solution to renewable energy source’s intermittency is the physical storage of energy. Thus, storage technologies are critical to a transition to RE heavy energy systems.

Opinions

Climate Policy

As climate change has already affected what constitutes effective development, a growing, aspirational nation such as India needs to factor climate considerations into its vision of future development

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

The report fails to make its evaluations in an unbiased and rigorous manner.

Opinions

Climate Policy

In anticipation of India updating its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), Aman Srivastava and Ashwini Swain evaluate the climate pledges made by Prime Minister Modi at COP26.

Opinions

Climate Policy

Methodology of Yale-Columbia Environmental Performance Index is indefensible, tone-deaf on ethics, ignorant of a long literature on climate equity, and inconsistent with broadly accepted politics.

Journal articles

Energy Transitions

Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in the Talcher coalfields of Odisha, the article argues that the labouring lives of migrant workers from marginalised communities have been invisiblised in a ‘shadow economy’ of coal extraction through subcontracting and labour recruitment by local contractors working with state-owned coal companies.

Opinions

Energy Transitions

Current short-term fixes for India’s power crisis neither address rising uncertainty in the electricity system nor are aligned to a transition towards a 21st century energy system.

Opinions

Climate Policy

India’s engagement in Glasgow, while storied and multi-faceted, also exposed faultlines in Indian climate politics; the faultlines in framing, policy, institutions, and diplomacy need to be addressed cogently if the country is to successfully negotiate the many transitions ahead.

Opinions

Energy Transitions

The current crisis can be explained by a demand surge, supply disruptions and dysfunctional cash flow.

Opinions

Energy Transitions

For a country like India, a policy package approach could help unlock the social acceptability of transformative action.

Opinions

Climate Policy

The latest IPCC report says the world is not on track for achieving the mitigation goals. The response to that should be to redouble efforts and limit harm to the extent possible

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

As the sea ravages coastal settlements, seawalls are springing up. But real solutions lie elsewhere, far away from the coast.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

Air pollution is a national emergency. We must reject the discourse centred solely around Delhi and eschew the techno-fixes currently dominating the discourse and recognise the long-term transitions necessary to sustainably improve air quality.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

Federal carbon pricing in the US suffers from the lack of any natural and/or consistent constituency to support it through policy development, legislation, and implementation. While interest group politics have been mitigated by good policy entrepreneurship at the subnational level, the lack of policy entrepreneurship and the changing positions of competing interest groups have kept a federal carbon pricing policy from becoming a reality.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

सभी देशों की तरह भारत के लिए भी, जलवायु परिवर्तन एक अत्यंत तेजी से बढती समस्या बन गई है। इस लेख के जरिये पिल्लई एवं अन्य तर्क देते हैं कि इस समस्या के समाधान के लिए भारत की संघीय प्रणाली की पुनर्कल्पना करने की आवश्यकता है, क्योंकि भारत के संविधान में जलवायु संबंधी कई क्षेत्रों में राज्यों के महत्वपूर्ण कर्त्तव्य निर्धारित किये गए हैं। वे जलवायु नीति में संस्थागत सुधार हेतु एक नए दृष्टिकोण का सुझाव देते हैं, जो राष्ट्रीय लक्ष्यों के लिए अपने कार्यों का समन्वय करते हुए राज्यों को पर्याप्त लचीलापन देगा।

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

Addressing the issue of climate change requires reimagining Indian federalism, as the Indian Constitution gives states a crucial role in several arenas of climate action. The authors propose a new approach to institutional reform in climate policy, one that gives states adequate flexibility while coordinating their actions for national goals.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

Air pollution is a complex societal problem. We must recognise this and focus our attention on long-term policy pathways with clear goals and timelines

Journal articles

Adaptation and Resilience

Climate Policy

The paper suggests how countries can sequence the formation of climate institutions given the constraints of national politics and existing national political institutions.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

For different knowledge systems to work better together toward climate solutions, we need to reframe the way questions are asked and research pursued, in order to inform action without slipping into reductionism.

Journal articles

Adaptation and Resilience

Climate Policy

How do states respond to the challenge of climate governance? Drawing on a collection of country studies, this paper outlines a framework to explain the path-dependent emergence of climate institutions.

Journal articles

Adaptation and Resilience

Climate Policy

Drawing on cases spanning four developed and four developing countries with an analytical overview, the paper examines the conditions under which climate institutions emerge, the forms they take, and the governance functions they serve.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

The revised WHO guidelines are a clear nudge from the health sector towards the deep decarbonisation of India’s economy

Journal articles

Climate Policy

Tools are needed to benchmark carbon emissions and pledges against criteria of equity and fairness, but standard economic approaches ignore equity. This paper proposes a utilitarian benchmark computed in a transparent optimization framework, which could usefully inform the equity benchmark debate.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

Climate Policy

To embark on a low-carbon development pathway, India will need an institutional architecture with a more strategic bent.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

Global government energy RD&D investments between 2000-2018 are decarbonizing. Nuclear has held steady, fossil fuels have decreased, and clean energy has increased. China and India have now joined the United States and Japan in the ranks of the top four countries overall.

Books and book chapters

Environmental Governance and Policy

Given development imperatives in these countries, courts are often faced with the ‘economy/development versus environment’ question. In such situations, the courts rely on IEL in an instrumental fashion in support of the final outcome of the case, rather than engaging with the substantive content of the IEL principles.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

Delhi is one of the most polluted cities on the planet, with ambient PM2.5 levels routinely exceeding acceptable levels and contributing to a significant burden of disease. This is the first study to provide evidence of the association between short-term PM2.5 exposures and mortality in Delhi.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

Climate Policy

The Centre can play an important supporting role by providing credible analysis on low-carbon policy choices to the states when required.

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

Climate Policy

India needs new dedicated organisations, policy frameworks, and financing mechanisms. Begin with a low-carbon development commission

Journal articles

Adaptation and Resilience

Climate Policy

The politics of opportunism has animated institutional development in India. The paper looks at the emergence and decline of climate institutions over three decades, showing how political conditions have shaped institutional form.

Opinions

Climate Policy

Translating complex climate science into language people understand has always been difficult. At various times, the aim of different climate policies has been holding average global temperature rise to 2°C or 1.5°C, or ensuring emissions peak by a particular year. Net zero targets are the most recent attempt to simplify the climate crisis in order to make it manageable.

Climate Policy

The central purpose of this dissertation is to examine how countries at different stages of economic development address socio-economic objectives through green industrial policies, focusing mainly on the employment implications of their policies. The dissertation draws on interviews with more than 100 experts in China, India, South Africa, and Ethiopia to analyze the employment implications of specific green industrial policy strategies, policy choices, and policy design and the role of government in managing the same.

Opinions

Climate Policy

India needs a path that shows how a focus on opportunities for low-carbon development is more likely, in practice, to deliver emissions reductions than abstract future 2050 pledges

Opinions

Climate Policy

The Indian road to leadership should be based on near-term actions, institutional strengthening, and a combination of mid- and long-term targets

Opinions

Energy Transitions

India’s new trade rules are political and an irritant; instead, New Delhi should be planning a stable institutional model

Opinions

Climate Policy

India has always argued that climate is linked to development choices, livelihoods and equity. Don’t ask activists to narrow down their concerns

Books and book chapters

Climate Policy

Environmental Governance and Policy

A review of the legal and regulatory landscape in India reveals that the main environment and energy related laws, policies and regulatory processes offer several hooks to bring climate claims to courts.

Journal articles

Energy Transitions

This paper investigates why new coal-fired power plants are being financed and built in South and Southeast Asia given that new coal plants without carbon capture and storage are incompatible with a 1.5 °C temperature goal. The paper particularly focuses on developing countries where these coal-fired power plants are being built that are recipients of Chinese government-backed finance.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

Making information widely accessible to the people has been central to India’s COVID-19 response. So if governments were to raise awareness and disseminate information on air pollution the way they have done with COVID-19, what might that look like?

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

The draft Environment Impact Notification 2020 has been widely criticised because it is not designed to protect the environment. It will further weaken the 2006 EIA and rather than deter violations, encourage them.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

In the Global Environmental and Occupational Health (GEOHealth) Program, we aim to build exposure assessment model to estimate ambient air pollution exposure at a very fine resolution which can be linked with health outcomes leveraging well-phenotyped cohorts which have information on geolocation of households of study participants.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

The environment ministry needs to be clear about its role — its mandate is to create and sustain a regulatory framework that prevents the plunder of our natural resources, not actively accelerate the pace of environmental devastation.

Journal articles

Energy Transitions

The paper examines the state of play in energy supply and demand, and argues for the recovery of an older tradition of attention to energy demand patterns in addition to energy supply.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

The study finds a temporal association between high levels of ambient air pollution, higher systolic BP, and incident hypertension. Given that high BP is an important risk factor of cardiovascular disease, reducing ambient air pollution is likely to have meaningful clinical and public health benefits.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

It offers some opportunities. But the key is in contesting bad policies, which dilute environmental norms, processes

Journal articles

Climate Policy

Over the last two decades, many countries have passed laws addressing climate change and related areas. Research now shows that these laws make a difference to emission outcomes, but the pathways of impact require further research.

Opinions

Energy Transitions

India’s recent experiences, and successful global models, deliver a clear message- power pools can’t be built without an institutional architecture other countries trust

Opinions

Adaptation and Resilience

Climate Policy

Policy ideas should marry employment and industrial priorities with green outcomes

Opinions

Energy Transitions

We must use this critical juncture to push for positive reforms and overdue structural changes to build a resilient electricity future

Opinions

Energy Transitions

There is a slump in demand for electricity. This will create a financial crisis. But can it lead to reforms?

Journal articles

Adaptation and Resilience

This article describes an unprecedented threat to large parts of India and China due to receding glaciers in the Himalaya. It posits that this threat will require these countries to redefine their security calculus by incorporating an ecological dimension.

Opinions

Climate Policy

Energy Transitions

If sustained, behavioural changes, induced by Covid-19, can alter the way we live and work

Opinions

Energy Transitions

The Centre’s push for smart meters may be an important ingredient for transitioning to a 21st century electricity-system. However, let us not pretend it is the silver bullet to solve the long-standing problems of discom finance and losses.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

A decade of insufficient political action on climate change means that nations must now do four times the work — or do the same in one-third of the time — to comply with the climate pact they made in Paris.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

This essay examines climate litigation in India by observing what one can interpret from the current set of climate cases, and predicting that while conditions are favorable for climate litigation in India to grow, in the near future climate claims are likely to remain peripheral issues.

Opinions

Environmental Governance and Policy

On Delhi air pollution, the AAP government shouldn’t throw its hands up but formulate a concrete plan.

Opinions

Climate Policy

To tackle climate change, not only does India need to pivot into a low-carbon future, it also needs to step up as a leader of climate-vulnerable countries.

Books and book chapters

Environmental Governance and Policy

The book chapter analyses the design, implementation, and enforcement of two environmental laws passed by the Parliament – the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974 and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981 – with a view to understanding the factors that contribute to the failure of pollution regulation in India.

Journal articles

Energy Transitions

In making the shift to renewable energy, India has to manage the disruption of long-standing institutional and political arrangements in ways that enable clean energy in a sustainable manner.

Books and book chapters

Climate Policy

Energy Transitions

Environmental Governance and Policy

An assessment of the government’s actions in areas of environment, energy and climate change with a view to interpreting its track record.

Journal articles

Energy Transitions

This article frames the political economy of electricity trade and hydropower development in eastern South Asia. It argues that progress in both electricity trade and hydropower development in the region will be incremental in the next decade, hindered by mixed demand signals and the turbulence of geopolitics.

Books and book chapters

Climate Policy

This book brings together perspectives from leading researchers, activists, and policymakers to provide clarity on why India should engage with climate change and how it can best do so. It argues that while the climate crisis is becoming an increasing existential challenge, a pathway to development innocent of climate change is no longer available for India.

Books and book chapters

Environmental Governance and Policy

The book studies the evolution of the environmental legal framework in India. It explores the judicial reasoning and underlying assumptions in landmark judgments of the Supreme Court, the High Courts and the National Green Tribunal.

Books and book chapters

Environmental Governance and Policy

The chapter examines the growth and application of the public trust doctrine, and explains why it is difficult to identify how the doctrine could lend predictability to decision-making regarding public trust properties.

Books and book chapters

Environmental Governance and Policy

The chapter examines three procedural environmental rights – the right to information, the right to public participation, and the right to access to justice – in detail, and identifies loopholes and limitations in the adjudication of each right.

Books and book chapters

Climate Policy

This chapter sets the stage for a discussion on policies by reviewing the emergence of national policies and national institutions. It also covers the spread of climate institutions, which while weak and in their early stages, provide the spaces within which climate discussion is likely to be mainstreamed, if at all, in coming years.

Books and book chapters

Climate Policy

The chapter explains the changing context for climate change debates in India, from one focused on diplomatic concerns of equity and responsibility for the problem, to one equally concerned with understanding its development implications.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

India has disproportionately high mortality and disease burden due to air pollution. This burden is generally highest in the low Socio-demographic Index (SDI) states of north India.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

Energy Transitions

This study addresses the challenge energy decision-makers face in aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement, emphasizing the need for multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to navigate the complex interplay of energy systems with social and environmental goals.

Books and book chapters

Energy Transitions

Mapping Power provides an analysis of the political economy of electricity in fifteen Indian states. The book emphasizes that successful reform efforts should aim at a positive dynamic between electricity reform and electoral success.

Books and book chapters

Energy Transitions

This chapter analyses how the power sector has evolved in Punjab, especially through institutional restructuring and policy reforms, with the objective to examine the policy choices, outcomes, winners, and losers at the state level.

Books and book chapters

Energy Transitions

This chapter examines the political economy of transitions in MP’s power sector, with the objective of identifying drivers of policy choices and their outcomes.

Books and book chapters

Energy Transitions

This chapter explores the political economy of AP’s electricity sector transitions over four periods, with the objective to explain the drivers of policy choices and their outcomes.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

This article traces India’s evolving stance in global climate policy and politics, examining the shifts in knowledge, ethics, and governance that have shaped its domestic and international climate policies.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

Carbon taxes and emissions trading systems (ETSs) to limit emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) are increasingly common. At the end of 2015, 17 GHG ETSs were operational in 55 jurisdictions, and 18 jurisdictions collected at least one carbon tax. This paper assesses the performance of carbon taxes and ETSs with respect to environmental effectiveness (reduction of emissions regulated by the instrument), cost-effectiveness (marginal abatement cost), economic efficiency, public finance, and administrative issues.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

This paper focuses on an often overlooked aspect of environmental grievance redressal, viz., the effectiveness of existing redressal forums. It evaluates the effectiveness of environmental redressal forums viz., the Appellate Authorities constituted under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974 [the Water Act] and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981 [Air Act] on two broad dimensions: (1) ability to deliver good quality decisions and (2) accessibility.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

Energy Transitions

In the US, over 400 state and local incentives have been issued to increase the adoption of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) since 2008. This article quantifies the influence of key incentives and enabling factors like charging infrastructure and receptive demographics on PEV adoption.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

This paper analyses trends in adoption of national climate legislation and strategies, GHG targets, and renewable and energy efficiency targets in almost all UNFCCC Parties, focusing on the period from 2007 to 2017. Results show that national climate legislation and strategies witnessed a strong increase in the first half of the assessed decade, but have somewhat stagnated in recent years.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

This piece examines India’s complex role in global climate mitigation, analyzing its varied perceptions from a significant emitter to a low-carbon leader amid development uncertainties. It introduces an interpretive approach to forecast India’s energy and emissions, suggesting that current policies may align with its Paris Agreement goals.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

The principles and framework laid out here are offered as a contribution to understanding the nature of the potential impacts of a transition, principles for equitably sharing the costs of avoiding them, and guidance for prioritizing which fossil resources can still be extracted.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

This article analyses the implementation of emissions trading systems (ETSs) in eight jurisdictions: the EU, Switzerland, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and California in the US, Québec in Canada, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea and pilot schemes in China. The article clarifies what is working, what isn’t and why, when it comes to the practice of implementing an ETS. The eight ETSs are evaluated against five main criteria: environmental effectiveness, economic efficiency, market management, revenue management and stakeholder engagement.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

This correspondence presents a response to du Pont et. al for suggesting that wealthier countries have made more ‘equitable’ contributions to the Paris goals than poorer countries, and points out the biases towards wealthier nations in the approach and methodology adopted.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

This paper explores the potential for using approaches that fall under the umbrella of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) in guiding analyses and policy-making that relate to the climate mitigation–development interface.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

Bhargav Krishna and colleagues call for health driven, multisectoral policy making with defined air quality targets to curb the impact of air pollution exposure in South Asia

Journal articles

Climate Policy

President Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States will exit from the Paris Agreement betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the agreement works. It also goes against long-agreed climate principles, and is blind to emergent clean energy trends.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

There is a need to reassess what constitutes effective leadership in public health, through a construct that reflects the interdependence of leadership at multiple levels across the health system and its partners in other sectors.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

A reply to ‘Paris Agreement: Differentiation without Historical Responsibility?’ by Kirit S Parikh and Jyoti K Parikh (EPW, 9 April 2016), which deepens the discussion on the key concepts of co-benefits and historical responsibility.

Books and book chapters

Environmental Governance and Policy

The chapter examines the participatory processes under the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006 and the Forest Rights Act, 2006. It describes the opportunities provided for public engagement in the two laws and evaluates whether the participatory processes are indeed effective and whether public concerns can influence regulatory outcomes.

Journal articles

Adaptation and Resilience

Climate Policy

The growing focus on climate policy in India is not matched by an equivalent level of attention to institutions . Effective institutions are also needed for the design, coordination and implementation of policy. This paper examines the functioning of institutions, organised around three periods: pre-2007; 2007 to 2009 and 2010 to mid-2014.

Books and book chapters

Energy Transitions

This chapter explores existing conversations around energy transformation for a New Earth and puts forward ideas toward a conversation that might bridge the divide between how energy is supplied versus those who emphasize the demand side.

Journal articles

Adaptation and Resilience

Climate Policy

Through an examination of state climate plans in five Indian states, the paper explores the implications of sub-national climate measures. Through an empirically driven inductive analysis, the paper argues that because state climate plans, at least in the initial stages, followed a centrally driven, and sometimes ambiguous agenda, their scope and room to experiment was circumscribed.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

Planning for India’s energy future requires addressing multiple and simultaneous economic, social and environmental challenges. This paper proposes a “multi-criteria decision analysis” approach to this problem, using illustrative examples from the cooking and buildings sectors

Journal articles

Climate Policy

This article examines India’s INDC through each lens, to understand the implied logic with regard to India’s complex climate-development choices, and with regard to its strategic international choices. It finds that the INDC reflects, as yet, an inadequate consideration of the climate and development linkages that should inform India’s actions.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

Achieving a truly sustainable energy transition requires progress across multiple dimensions beyond climate change mitigation goals. This article reviews and synthesizes results from disparate strands of literature on the coeffects of mitigation to inform climate policy choices at different governance levels.

Books and book chapters

Climate Policy

This article reviews India’s foreign policy on climate change, arguing that while it is marked by tactical virtuosity, it increasingly exhibits strategic vacuity.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

The article, published in Environmental Law and Practice Review, discusses the relevant provisions of the law pertaining to liability for causing air pollution, identifies critical issues that have emerged in the current liability regime, and proposes a way forward.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

With this article, the authors seek to open a research agenda that takes a more sophisticated approach to the question of linkages within the broader global climate governance landscape.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

There is a potential tension between mitigation-focused transformation and nationally driven sustainable development. This paper explores this tension in the context of operationalizing the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which has to deal with the fundamental tension between country ownership and transformational change.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

A book review of ‘Environmental Jurisprudence and the Supreme Court: Litigation, Interpretation, Implementation’ by Geetanjoy Sahu (Orient Black Swan, TISS), 2014.

Journal articles

Adaptation and Resilience

Climate Policy

Based on a detailed analysis of five state climate plans, this article finds that climate plans provide an important institutional platform to mainstream concerns of environmental sustainability into development planning but fail to update ideas of sustainability to include climate resilience.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

Co-benefits rarely enter quantitative decision-support frameworks, often because the methodologies for their integration are lacking or not known. This review fills in this gap by providing comprehensive methodological guidance on the quantification of co-impacts and their integration into climate-related decision making based on the literature.

Journal articles

Adaptation and Resilience

India’s long-standing official position in global climate negotiations has been that any discussion on agriculture must be held in the realm of adaptation, not mitigation. Is this apprehension sound?

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

A hastily designed institution will only worsen an already weak regulatory system. But a strategically designed one with adequate powers could provide some succour, even if only to a part of the gamut of environmental governance problems in the country.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

What is the appropriate balance between scientific analysis and governmental input in the IPCC? Claiming government overreach and calling for greater insulation of the process come from a misleadingly simple interpretation.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

Keeping with the global trend, India seems to be executing a “Green Industrial Policy” that seeks to prioritise production and consumption of clean energy. Will it lead to green growth and sustainable development?

Journal articles

Climate Policy

First, there has been a substantial increase in climate legislation and strategies between 2007 and 2012: 67% of global GHG emissions are now under national climate legislation or strategy compared to 45% in 2007. Second, there are substantial regional effects to the patterns, with most increases in non-Annex I countries, particularly in Asia and Latin America. Third, many more countries have adopted climate strategies than have adopted climate legislation between 2007 and 2012.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

The EIA process involves several stakeholders with a variety of interests, often conflicting, and the process is deeply contentious with significant implications for a range of rights. This paper aims to bring some clarity to our understanding of this complex process through a critical examination of the EIA Notification, related documents and judicial pronouncements.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

Environmental decision-making processes, particularly in the developing countries, are often opaque and inaccessible. India’s experience in striving to improve its processes may thus provide useful lessons for other jurisdictions.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

There is a growing body of climate-related policy in India; at the same time, there is no clear and consistent approach or framework that directs and guides these efforts. In this paper, we propose and develop a methodology for operationalising a co-benefits approach to climate policy formulation.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

This review of Indian climate politics examines the initial crystallization of Indian climate positions and its roots in national climate politics, and then examines the modest ways in which climate politics have been revisited in domestic debates since about 2007.

Books and book chapters

Climate Policy

Environmental Governance and Policy

This volume focuses on the rise of regulatory agencies in the developing world, specifically Asia, Africa, and Latin America. – with implications both for the study of regulation and the study of development.

Books and book chapters

Climate Policy

India has taken a remarkably consistent approach to global climate negotiations; a principled position on climate change founded on attention to equity dimensions of the problem. This stance has strong implications for India’s arguments for the relative mitigation burdens of the industrialised and developing world and therefore for India’s approach to multilateralism applied to climate change.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

The intent of this paper is to draw out common themes that characterize a “regulatory state of the South,” while remaining sensitive to the variations in level of economic development and political institutional contexts within “the South.”

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

Sustainable development has always been a compromise that papered over real conflict between environment and development. Twenty years after Rio, the geopolitical climate is far less conducive to easy compromises. So, Rio+20 should focus on national and sub-national institutions and embrace a diversity of national political, institutional and legal contexts, while also ensuring the inclusion of the weakest.

Books and book chapters

Climate Policy

This Handbook builds a composite picture of contemporary Indian climate politics and policy by bringing together prominent voices from India, including policymakers, politicians, business leaders, civil society activists and academics.

Books and book chapters

Climate Policy

As frustration mounts in some quarters at the perceived inadequacy or speed of international action on climate change, and as the likelihood of significant impacts grows, the focus is increasingly turning to liability for climate change damage.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

The Ministry of Environment and Forests’ initiative to set up an independent environmental regulator acknowledges the problems in the current system of regulations. Yet, it has a number of limitations because of which viable alternatives to the proposed agency are actively constructed here.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

Governing energy globally requires approaches that can simultaneously cope with three realities: the highly fragmented and conflictual nature of the current inter-state system’s efforts to govern energy; the diversity of institutions and actors relevant to energy; and the dominance of national processes of energy decision making that are not effectively integrated into global institutions.

Journal articles

Energy Transitions

This special issue brings together leading experts from Asia, Europe and North America to examine the international institutions, national governance mechanisms and financing systems that together will determine the future of the energy sector.

Journal articles

Energy Transitions

The article develops three narratives that have guided Indian energy governance domestically: state control; the grafting on of market institutions; and the embryonic linkage between energy security and climate change.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

Although not for the reason most climate watchers anticipated, the 15th COP to the UNFCCC and the CMP-5 to the Kyoto Protocol at Copenhagen marked an important moment in the history of the climate negotiations.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

These reflections on the Copenhagen climate negotiations first provide a brief encapsulation of events, followed by a discussion of the key negotiation issues that took centre stage. It then provides a political interpretation of the Accord and its future prospects.

Books and book chapters

Climate Policy

In an ironic and to most Indians quite disturbing turn, India is increasingly portrayed as an obstructionist in the global climate negotiations. How did a country likely to be on the frontline of climate impacts – with a vast proportion of the world’s poor and a reasonably good record of energy-related environmental policy and performance – reach this diplomatic cul de sac?

Books and book chapters

Climate Policy

This chapter suggests that focusing in the short run on explicit caps (or the implicit caps of climate plans) for developing countries is a misguided policy. It argues that strengthening domestic institutions in developing countries is needed for successful low-carbon development.

Journal articles

Environmental Governance and Policy

This article examines the tensions and challenges of Indian – and indeed Southern – environmentalism in an age of climate change.

Journal articles

Energy Transitions

This paper attempts to articulate a political interpretation of the electricity-groundwater conundrum. The paper argues that farmers are quite rational in their current decision-making given the problematic context within which they make choices.

Journal articles

Climate Policy

Reflections on the Bali climate summit and thoughts on India’s way forward.

Journal articles

Energy Transitions

Environmental Governance and Policy

This paper seeks to examine the practice of electricity regulation in India, using case studies of three state-level electricity regulators. This paper suggests a proactive regulatory approach where governments give regulators the latitude to proactively steer the sector.

Books and book chapters

Energy Transitions

This volume contributes to debates on the role of regulators in electricity reform and on the institution of regulation in India by examining electricity regulators in three Indian states.

Books and book chapters

Energy Transitions

Drawing on six country studies – Argentina, Bulgaria, Ghana, India, Indonesia, and South Africa – the volume examines whether and how the process of electricity reform can support rather than hinder sustainable development.

Books and book chapters

Environmental Governance and Policy

Market-based reforms in an agrarian setting to address the water problem must be integrated into the local governance in order to succeed.

Books and book chapters

Environmental Governance and Policy

An assessment of the World Commission on Dams set up to produce a set of international guidelines for the design, construction, operation and decommissioning of large dams and options on their alternatives.