India staying out of major climate pledges at COP26: Officials argue varied reasons

PM Modi addressing UN climate change conference 2021 in the UK (Image: Twitter/@narendramodi)

Despite surprising large segments of the global community and climate experts by announcing major commitments, India has till now stayed away from all the major pledges at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Early on Thursday, the UK announced the ‘Global Coal to Clean Power Transition Statement’ agreement where 18 countries and 170 organisations and businesses have initially committed to ending all investments in new coal power generation domestically and internationally.

This could end over 40GW of coal across 20 countries, according to the British government and lead to rapid deployment of clean power and associated technology across these nations, which include the UK, Vietnam, Chile, Poland and Ukraine.

India, the second-largest producer and user of coal, has till now refused to sign a global deal to ditch it, the burning of which is considered to be the single-biggest contributor to climate change. Coal still produced around 37 percent of the world’s electricity as of 2019.

Coal Compulsions

Multiple officials said that despite the best of intentions, India’s hands were tied by the current level of economic and industrial development in the country, combined with its energy use pattern. “It is simply not feasible for us to preclude coal and by extension coal-fired thermal power generation units from our plans for the country’s energy future at the moment,” an official said.

The government’s sensitivities towards reducing coal production are greater than other areas. “This is true for almost all nations, given the raw value of coal, its abundance, relatively low cost of extraction and predominant position in the energy trade. China has also not signed the deal,” he said.

According to the Statistical Review of World Energy, China is the largest producer of the black fuel globally and produces more than five times the coal that India produces. However, the country, along with Japan, South Korea and the G20 member nations, has promised to stop funding coal power plants abroad.

Methane pledge

India’s reasons for staying away from another global pledge on methane emissions are slightly different. More than 100 countries have made a pledge to cut methane emission levels by 30 percent from the 2020 levels by 2030.

While carbon dioxide (CO2) gets most of the spotlight in the global climate debate, methane remains a potent gas greenhouse gases, which warms the planet by 28-34 times as compared to CO2 and is responsible for a third of the current warming from human activities.

India is the third-largest source of methane emissions, according to a paper supported by the European Union’s climate change project. But the government believes the commitments made at the latest summit by India are sufficient at the moment.

Apart from being released industrially during the extraction of oil and gas, methane is most consistently released due to rice cultivation and produced in significant amounts in the digestive system of cows. This is true across Asia.

“As a result, it was impossible for India to commit to a drastic reduction of methane, given how large and unorganised our agri sector is. On a central level, the government is still promoting an increase in the number of cows in the country, in a bid to continuously expand the dairy sector,” a senior Delhi-based policy expert said. The government was also concerned at a provision in the agreement that penalises errant nations by putting trade clauses, he added.

India is already a member of the Global Methane Initiative (GMI), a voluntary, international partnership that brings together national governments, private sector entities, development banks, NGOs and others in an effort to reduce methane gas emissions. It advances methane recovery and use it as a clean energy source.

Forest cover

An initiative led by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has received the support of more than 100 national leaders to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by the end of the decade. Major nations which make up for 85 percent of the global forest cover, including Canada, Russia, Congo, Indonesia and Brazil, have voiced support for it.

India is also home to 1.8 percent of the global forest cover. But officials say the estimated 72 million hectares of cover in India has continued to go up.

“The latest Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) brought out by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations has shown that India stands third on the list of nations to have gained forest cover in the past decade. We will continue our own reforms,” a senior environment ministry official said.