technological basis for environmental activities and strengthening punitive measures for existing degradation (Planning Commission, 1989: 18). The 7th FYP also asserted that environmental management (including conservation, research, education, etc.) was an accepted guiding principle for national development, which had received progressively more technical, legislative and administrative support at both Union and State levels (Planning Commission, 1989: 18.4-18.5) during the preceding Sixth FYP and which would be continued during the Seventh plan (Planning Commission, 1989: 18.22). Environmental management was to be supported through increasing staffing support to the existing network of decentralised, subject-specific, Distributed Information Centres (DICs), which together comprised India’s computerised Environmental Information System (EN-VIS); the plan proposed expansion to include DICs on Forestry, Desertification, Mining, Himalayan Ecology and Renewable Energy (among others) (Planning Commission, 1989: 18.59).
The 8th Five Year Plan in 1992 is the first to mention climate change; perhaps unsurprisingly it is mentioned in the context of the imminent United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) to be held in June 1992. The plan acknowledged the global nature of concerns about the ozone layer, GHGs and climate change, but emphasised the importance of still being able to address the needs of impoverished people and of not being subject to any rules that either imposed burdens on developing countries or interfered with a state’s right to use its resources. In addition the plan noted that the “[t]ransfer of technology, flow of new and additional resources … to fully meet any additional cost are pre-requisites to international cooperation in the environment sector” (Planning Commission, 1992: 4.16.7). This stance – or idea of India’s relative position in the world – would echo through India’s early engagement with the emerging climate regime.
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scientific information, which helps to galvanise the UNGA into establishing the INC. The INC in turn negotiated the Framework Convention. The interplay of influence between ideas and institutions in this early phase is indicated by lines “A” and “B” in Figure 20 below.
Notwithstanding the impetus to create the IPCC there remained sufficient uncertainty about the impacts and human origin of, and the link between, concentrations and temperature rise (for example) for the idea to remain open to challenge by both scientists and politicians. Thus it would be useful to think of early IPCC Assessment reports as containing the type of ideas that Cox referred to as “collective images” (Cox, 1981) or coherent thought patterns of specific collectives (Cox, 1987) in that the ideas were held by Assessment authors and scientists of peer- reviewed work on which assessments were based – but these were still held and contested to some degree by other scientists. These collective images aside, the objective (Article 2) of the FCCC pointed to the existence of an international intersubjective idea that climate change posed a threat to humanity and required the “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” (United Nations, 1992: Article 2). Plainly put, “something should be done.
Even thought the science was still contested, the idea of climate change as an emerging problem was sufficient to prompt the formation of the INC by the UN GA which in turn negotiated the Framework Convention. As Cox defined them, institutions are a combination of ideas and material forces (Cox, 1981); this can be seen in the emergence of first the INC and then the FCCC – the idea of concentrations being harmful leads to the creation of institutions at the international level to facilitate problem-solving by the states (influence is represented by line “A” in Figure 20).
In this phase India is severely constrained by its material circumstances. It is a poor developing country with significant development challenges - daily life is daunting for most of its population as it measures very low on the Human Development Index and is working its way through a macro-economic crisis. Thus when confronted by this nascent knowledge of the threat posed by a changing climate it is understandable that India should develop the intersubjective ideas favouring a differentiated approach to addressing the issue. India could not conceive of having to direct scarce resources to address an issue it did not create (stocks of GHG in the atmosphere) and posited therefore that the creators of the problem should be the first movers and resource providers. The interaction of these ideas and material capabilities are indicated by lines “C” and “D”. The idea of being responsible for solving a problem they believed they did not create must have struck the Indian government as both absurd and unfair and
certainly led it to advocate CBDR at international level Certainly it seemed so to members of civil society who gained worldwide recognition for their refutation of a developed country report claiming that India, Brazil and China were among the top six GHG emitters due to their emissions of methane from rice paddies and livestock, and carbon dioxide from deforestation (Agarwal & Narain, 1991; Forsyth, 2005). Agarwal and Narain’s book captured the key intersubjective idea in India that atmospheric space should be shared on a per capita basis because whilst India’s emissions were produced in the effort to survive, developed countries’
emissions stemmed from consumption of products and services over and above those needed to simply survive (see line “E” in Figure 20) (Agarwal & Narain, 1991).
What is also notable is that during this early phase the existence of the intersubjective idea at international level that climate change was a threat did not prompt the Indian government to create any domestic institutions geared toward dealing with climate change: there were no specialist “climate change” portfolios in the Ministry of Environmental Affairs and members of UN permanent missions are sent to the INC negotiations (see Figure 19 above). In addition the 7th and 8th Five Year Plans barely mention Climate Change rather focussing on other more pressing local environmental issues like air and water quality and deforestation: note therefore the absence of lines of influence between ideas – international and national – and domestic institutions in Figure 20.
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Figure 20: Visual representation of configuration of forces in phase 1.
Note: Line indicates influence; arrow indicates directionality
Given the material constraints (improvments in the economy after 1991 notwithstanding), the insubjectively held idea that developed countries were responsible for the global warming (they had created the problem and had the wherewithal to address it) and the need to pursue economic development in order to lift people out of poverty, it is the contention of this thesis that in the first phase India could not but conceive of equity and CBDR as an expression of
“differentiation” as essential to their positioning at the negotiations. Thus a prominent feature of phase one is that at both national and international level several of the forces ‘lined up’ in favour of a regime characterised by differentiation - indicating a nascent hegemonic state. That is not to suggest that differentiation in the form of CBDR & RC was uncontested, but merely that in this early phase of regime development India found its position largely ‘in sync’ with the prevailing alignment of forces.
5 India in the wings: the second phase (1995–2004)
This second phase covers the period from the first COP in
1995, through to the Marrakech Accords to the end of 2004, the year preceding the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. The following chapter describes the each of the forces as they operated at India’s domestic level and at the international level of the climate regime, with important events shown in Figure 21 below.
Crucial ideas (both intersubjectively and collectively held) are found in the IPCC’s Second and Third Assessment Reports. India was adjusting to a more liberalised economy with attendant variations in GDP in this phase while still battling high levels of poverty and underdevelopment.
In the climate regime, material capability in the form of finance, technology and capacity building – important to developing countries, including India – were seemingly low down on the international agenda during this second phase. The regime was in an institution-building phase as the states agreed to the Kyoto Protocol and then elaborated and operationalised it with the Marrakech Accords.
This section is an attempt to highlight connections between the mental frameworks within which, and through which, people and states conceive of action in the material world. These frameworks constrain and enable both what people and states are able to achieve and how they conceive of doing so.