On September 20, the world’s biggest-ever climate protest was held. The demonstrations were more pronounced in big cities of developed countries; in most developing countries, the response was muted. There was a token demonstration in India, for instance. The biggest demonstration was in New York where teenage activist Greta Thunberg spoke passionately about climate justice and the need for world leaders to take leadership. But alas, no such leadership was visible at the UN Climate Action Summit held on September 23 at the UN headquarters in New York.

When UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced the Climate Action Summit, his idea was to use this platform to raise ambition and increase climate action. Therefore, he lobbied with world leaders to enhance their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) or their climate action plan pledged under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

If enhancing the pledges is used as a parameter, then the summit was a great disappointment. The US - the world’s greatest carbon polluter - didn’t participate at the summit, though US President Donald Trump did make an inexplicable appearance and left quickly. China - the world’s largest current polluter - made ambiguous statements and put the responsibility on developed countries to lead. The European Union came with no concrete proposal. India, however, made some ambitious announcements.

India’s announcements and targets

“The time for talking is over. The world needs to act now,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his address at the summit. He made some major announcements, including an increase in renewable energy capacity to 450 gigawatts (GW), launching of a Coalition for Disaster Resilient infrastructure, spending $50 billion on water conservation, rainwater harvesting and for the development of water resources. These are indeed ambitious announcements. The question is how viable are they? Let’s examine these targets.

1. “In India, we are going to increase the share of non-fossil fuel, and by 2022, we plan to increase our renewable energy capacity to much beyond 175 GW, and later till 450 GW.”

Current projections show that due to a combination of market factors and government policy, it will be hard, if not impossible, for India to meet the initial 175 GW target. Wind, in particular, has lost steam in recent years and solar too is unable to keep up with the initial investment boom.

While the prime minister has not set a year for the 450 GW target, some news reports indicate 2030 as the target year. Meeting the 450 GW target, though highly desirable, may lead to significant grid stability issues in the absence of adequate investment in storage and in significantly upgrading the grid. Also, given weak demand growth, meeting such high targets will require shutting down of some coal power capacity, which the government has not committed to.

Overall, these targets are highly desirable but will need major reforms in the transmission and distribution sectors and stable policies to achieve.

2. “We have provided clean cooking gas to 150 million families.”

Providing clean cooking gas is again a very important objective. It has huge health benefits. But the precise climate change benefit of shifting from biomass-based cooking fuel to natural gas - which is a fossil fuel - is not clear. It is likely to increase greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve both health and climate benefits, a move to renewable electric cooking and biogas is more appropriate going forward.

3. “We have launched the Jal Jeevan Mission for water conservation, rainwater harvesting and for the development of water resources. India is going to spend approximately $50 billion on this in the next few years.”

Rs 3.5 lakh crore or $50 billion is the entire budget of the Jal Jeevan Mission (announced on Independence Day) whose primary aim is to provide piped water to all rural households by 2024. The project includes a conservation element, but its nature is not clear. The related Jal Shakti Abhiyan focuses on water conservation. Therefore, there is a need for more clarity on this aspect. Nevertheless, by focusing on water, the prime minister did bring to the fore the important issue of climate change adaptation.

4. “India and Sweden together with other partners are launching the leadership group within the industry transition track.”

Some details were announced at the Climate Action Summit regarding this group. India and Sweden, together with Argentina, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, South Korea and the UK, as well as a group of companies such as Dalmia Cement, DSM, Heathrow Airport, LKAB, Mahindra Group, Royal Schiphol Group, Scania, SpiceJet, SSAB, ThyssenKrupp and Vattenfall announced a new Leadership Group for Industry Transition that will drive transformation in hard-to-decarbonise and energy-intensive sectors such as aviation, cement, steel, fertiliser, etc.

The aim is to ensure heavy industries and mobility companies can find a workable pathway to deliver on the Paris Agreement and develop workable policy frameworks and incentives, and to enable joint investment into low-carbon infrastructure. This is an important initiative and must be pursued vigorously.

5. “India is launching a Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure.”

The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) is an international partnership that will support countries - both developed and developing - to build climate- and disaster-resilient infrastructure. The coalition’s secretariat, supported by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and based in New Delhi, will facilitate knowledge exchange, provide technical support and support capacity building. The Government of India, the UNDRR and partners have together worked on the CDRI initiative since the Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in 2016.

The Union Cabinet cleared the proposal in late August and approved funding of Rs 480 crore to the CDRI for a corpus required to fund technical assistance and research projects on an ongoing basis, setting up the Secretariat office and covering recurring expenditures for five years from 2019-20 to 2023-24.

The CDRI could become an important institution to build capacity on resilient infrastructure. This year’s flooding has again shown how vulnerable urban infrastructure is to extreme rainfall events. So, again a very important initiative on climate change adaptation.

The bottom line

Overall, India was the only major G-20 country to make ambitious announcements. These are important and desirable targets and must be planned and executed well.

The bottom line is the world is in a race to limit the impacts of climate change. Countries such as India are highly vulnerable and must do everything to balance the imperatives of development with climate change.

Chandra Bhushan is an environmentalist and a researcher, writer and campaigner for sustainable development. He was honoured with the Ozone Award by UN Environment in 2017 for his contributions to climate change mitigation and ozone layer protection.