India's Climate Commitments After Paris

In one line

India's climate obligations are what it has told the world it will do, and almost nothing in Indian law makes it do them.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: under the Paris Agreement 2015 each party prepares, communicates and maintains successive nationally determined contributions which it intends to achieve, and each successive contribution is to represent a progression beyond the previous one and to reflect the party's highest possible ambition. India has communicated contributions covering emissions intensity of gross domestic product, the share of non-fossil electricity generating capacity, and an additional carbon sink through forest and tree cover, and has announced a target of net zero by 2070. There is no Indian climate statute.

What the Agreement requires

Article 4(2). Each party shall prepare, communicate and maintain successive nationally determined contributions that it intends to achieve, and shall pursue domestic mitigation measures with the aim of achieving the objectives of those contributions.

Read that carefully, because the obligation is not what students usually assume. The obligation is to prepare, communicate and maintain a contribution, and to pursue domestic measures with the aim of achieving it. There is no obligation to achieve it. The Agreement's binding content is procedural.

Article 4(3). Each party's successive contribution will represent a progression beyond its then current contribution and reflect its highest possible ambition, reflecting common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities in the light of different national circumstances.

Article 7 deals with adaptation, establishing the global goal of enhancing adaptive capacity and resilience.

Article 9 provides that developed country parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing country parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation, in continuation of their existing obligations under the Convention.

And article 4(7) of the Convention remains: the extent to which developing country parties will effectively implement their commitments depends on the effective implementation by developed country parties of their commitments on financial resources and transfer of technology, and takes fully into account that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of developing country parties.

What India has undertaken

Three kinds of undertaking, and a candidate should distinguish them because they are not the same in character.

The nationally determined contribution. Communicated under article 4, and updated. Its content covers the emissions intensity of gross domestic product, expressed as a reduction against a base year rather than as an absolute cut; the share of non-fossil sources in installed electric power capacity; and the creation of an additional carbon sink through additional forest and tree cover. The intensity form matters: an intensity target permits absolute emissions to rise while the economy grows faster, which is consistent with the development position and is the reason it was chosen.