Publication Type: Books and book chapters

Transforming Reforms: Hype, Hostility, and Placation in Andhra Pradesh’s Power Sector Reforms

Summary

Andhra Pradesh’s experience with electricity reforms and their political ramifications has not only been fascinating a case for political analysts, but also have influenced reform approaches in other states. This chapter in ‘Mapping Power (‘Mapping Power: The Political Economy of Electricity in India’s States’ 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. Drawing on the findings, it discusses the transformations in electricity reform strategy over two phases of reforms and analyses the implications of past experiences for ongoing reforms in the sector.

Read more

Public Participation in Indian Environmental Law

Summary

This chapter, published in the book Sharing the Costs and Benefits of Energy and Resource Activity: Legal Change and Impact on Communities (Oxford University Press), analyses the legislative and regulatory safeguards that protect and foster public participation in environmental governance in India. It considers the environmental rights jurisprudence that has been developed by the Indian courts and discusses it in the context of the three procedural rights that form part of Rio Principle 10.

 

In particular, 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. The chapter concludes that while Indian law and judicial practice supports procedural rights in relation to environmental decision making, in practice, these rights are not just poorly implemented but also in danger of significant erosion.

Read more

Climate Change through the Lens of Energy Transformation

This chapter, published in ‘New Earth Politics: Essays from the Anthropocene’, 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 (how we produce) versus those who emphasize the demand side (how we use). The author approaches the problem by looking at four overarching narrative frames around energy and the implications of each for how energy is institutionalized and how it might be transformed. The four narrative frames explored are are ​​climate change, energy security, energy poverty, and local environmental pollution.

Read more

Multilateral Diplomacy on Climate Change

This article in ‘The Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy in India’ reviews India’s foreign policy on climate change, arguing that while it is marked by tactical virtuosity, it increasingly exhibits strategic vacuity. The chapter traces the evolution of India’s role in international climate negotiations, noting particularly India’s key role in highlighting equity and enshrining the concept of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ as a cornerstone of the negotiation process. The chapter then examines the turbulent phase from 2007 onwards, when India, along with other large developing country allies, experimented with new articulations of climate policy. This discussion explores the emergent drivers of Indian climate policy, including international pressures, shifting domestic political context, the emergence of ‘co-benefits’ as a framing concept, and the role of key personalities. The chapter concludes by suggesting that an exclusive emphasis on an equitable climate deal should transition to an approach that provides equal attention to equity and effectiveness in international climate outcomes.

Read more

The Rise of the Regulatory State of the South: Infrastructure and Development in Emerging Economies

Summary

Understanding the regulatory state of the south, and particularly forms of accommodation to political pressures, could stimulate a broader conversation around the role of the regulatory state in both north and south.This volume seeks to provoke such a discussion by empirically exploring the emergence of regulatory agencies of a range of developing countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The cases focus on telecommunications, electricity, and water: sectors that have often been at the frontlines of this transition. The central question for the volume is: Are there distinctive features of the regulatory state of the South, shaped by the political-economic context of the global south in the last two decades? To assist in exploring this question, the volume includes brief commentaries on the case studies from a range of disciplines: development economics, law and regulation, development sociology, and comparative politics. Collectively, the volume seeks to shape the contours of a productive inter-disciplinary conversation on the emergence of a significant empirical phenomenon – the rise of regulatory agencies in the developing world – with implications both for the study of regulation and the study of development.

Read more

Of Maps and Compasses: India in Multilateral Climate Negotiations

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 which is the setting on a metaphorical compass that has guided the last two decades of Indian climate policy, 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.

About the book ‘Shaping the Emerging World: India and the Multilateral Order’, Brookings Institution Press: The five major emerging national economies known as the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—have gained on the world stage. For BRICS watchers, and anyone interested in the future of India’s burgeoning economy, twenty-two scholars have developed one of the most comprehensive volumes to date on India: Shaping the Emerging World.

India faces a defining period. Its status as a global power is not only recognized but increasingly institutionalized, even as geopolitical shifts create both opportunities and challenges. India experienced rapid growth through participation in the existing multilateral order—now its development strategy makes it dependent on this order. With critical interests in almost every major multilateral regime and vital stakes in several emerging ones, India has no choice but to influence the evolving multilateral order if it is to sustain its own interests.

Read more

Handbook of Climate Change and India: Development, Politics and Governance

Summary

This Handbook brings together prominent voices from India, including policymakers, politicians, business leaders, civil society activists and academics, to build a composite picture of contemporary Indian climate politics and policy. The papers show that, within India, climate change is approached primarily as a developmental challenge and is marked by efforts to explore how multiple objectives of development, equity and climate mitigation can simultaneously be met. In addition, Indian perspectives on climate negotiations are in a state of flux. Considerations of equity across countries and a focus on the primary responsibility for action of wealthy countries continue to be central, but there are growing voices of concern on the impacts of climate change on India. How domestic debates over climate governance are resolved in the coming years, and the evolution of India’s global negotiation stance are likely to be important inputs toward creating shared understandings across countries in the years ahead, and identify ways forward. This volume on the Indian experience with climate change and development is a valuable contribution to both purposes.

Read more

Avenues for Climate Change Litigation in India

Summary of the book

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. Actual or potential climate change liability implicates a growing range of actors, including governments, industry, businesses, non-governmental organisations, individuals and legal practitioners. Climate Change Liability provides an objective, rigorous and accessible overview of the existing law and the direction it might take in seventeen developed and developing countries and the European Union. In some jurisdictions, the applicable law is less developed and less the subject of current debate. In others, actions for various kinds of climate change liability have already been brought, including high profile cases such as Massachusetts v. EPA in the United States. Each chapter explores the potential for and barriers to climate change liability in private and public law.

Read more

Climate Politics in India: How can the Industrialised World Bridge the Trust Deficit?

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? Part of the answer lies in the posturing of climate diplomats from India and industrialized countries. But looking beyond the cut and thrust of climate diplomacy, Indian climate policy and the reaction to it are a salutary case study in the failure to build North-South trust in the climate negotiations. Chapter published in ‘Indian Climate Policy: Choices and Challenges’.

Read more

Climate Change and Development: A Bottom-Up Approach to Mitigation for Developing Countries

Summary

A top-down approach – with internationally specified and binding national targets and timetables – has long been the preferred position of environmental advocates. But bottom-up approaches, such as policy measures to be devised on a country-by-country basis, have also been part of the policy grammar of the climate negotiations. For those who put climate change mitigation first (as opposed to those who seek to preserve sovereignty, or emphasize untrammeled economic growth), a focus on targets and timetables is an article of faith. This chapter in ‘Climate Finance: Regulatory and Funding Strategies for Climate Change and Global Development’ 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 will not produce predictability of future emissions from current baselines, and in the short to medium term may be misguided for environmental reasons. Top-down approaches risk creating counterproductive incentives, such as incentives to set overly high emissions targets or to avoid early action. They may, in practice reduce, rather than increase, the predictability of emissions levels and of emissions reductions against BAU baselines or meaningful targets. The paper argues that strengthening domestic institutions in developing countries is needed for successful low-carbon development.

Read more