5.3 Institutional arrangements
5.3.2 Institutional arrangements in India
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countries (Bodansky & Rajamani, n.d.; Dessai & Schipper, 2003). The level of detail in the Accords provided countries with sufficient detail to begin domestic Kyoto Protocol ratification procedures (Vespa, 2002). Despite the USA’s withdrawal, at least some negotiators hoped that having a legal framework in place would enable the USA to re-join the process at a later date (IISD, 2001b).
5.3.1.2 Post-Marrakech and pre-ratification
In 2002 India ratified the Kyoto Protocol and hosted the 8th COP in New Delhi. At the COP the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, outlined the strides India had taken in its renewable-energy sector while still calling for sufficient atmospheric space in which developing countries could develop (IISD, 2002). Vajpayee took the opportunity to highlight the importance of addressing adaptation and vulnerability and providing for capacity building for developing countries. He also stated firmly that
“consideration of developing country commitments would be premature due to, among other things, inequitable per capita emissions rights, and differences in per capita income between developing and developed countries (IISD, 2002). On the final day of COP8 the “Delhi Declaration on Climate Change and Sustainable Development” was adopted; it reaffirmed developing countries’
prioritisation of poverty eradication and development. In addition the Declaration reemphasised CBDR and the role of national priorities in relation to the implementation of FCCC commitments and adopted rules and procedures for the Executive Board (EB) of the CDM.
COP9 brought with it similar messages from the Indian government: calls for Annex I parties to take the lead and begin to address the impacts of climate change and to make good on the provision of financial and technological assistance to developing countries. India’s Joint Secretary for Environment and Forests, C. Viswanath, also rejected any commitments for developing countries (IISD, 2003).
After the change of government in India in 2004, the new Minister of Environment and Forests, A.
Raja, expressed the view at COP10 that GHG emissions by developing countries would rise in order for them to address poverty and achieve sustainable development. Much like Vajpayee two years before, and Viswanath the year prior, Raja also emphasised that contemplation of future commitments for developing countries was premature, as was any proposal to create new categories of parties under the FCCC (IISD, 2004).
above. The 1996 election ushered in a period of roughly two years of United Front coalitions after the BJP – standing alone – was unable to muster enough support on the floor of the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) to create a government; Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s term ended after only thirteen days. Following the collapse of the BJP government, a coalition of thirteen parties formed the first of the United Front governments led by H. D. Deve Gowda of the Janata Dal party (Khilnani, 2003). This coalition did not include the Congress, but Congress had pledged its working support for the government. Gowda resigned in April 1997 amid a dispute over communication between the coalition and the Congress Party and was replaced by fellow Janata Dal member, I. K.
Gujral. Both led the country for less than one year.
When Gujral resigned, fresh elections were called for in 1998. These elections also did not yield a clear winner. The next government was formed by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a coalition of 20 parties, which returned Atal Bihari Vajpayee to power, where he remained until the 2004 elections (Panagariya, 2008). This 1998 election marked the first time that the Congress Party lost consecutive elections; notable about these elections was that a coalition remained in power for the full term for the first time since independence (Malone, 2011). A notable continuity, however, was the maintenance of the economic reform agenda (albeit with different speeds and emphases) throughout this period, irrespective of the government’s ideological leanings. This indicates a clear, if specifically unarticulated, cross-party consensus that the inward-looking, import-substitution model had to be replaced (Panagariya, 2008).
In the publication of the ninth Five Year Plan (FYP) (1997-2002) climate change is mentioned a few times. However, climate change was clearly not a priority: the plan stated that the “main environmental problems in India relate to air and water pollution, degradation of common property resources, threat to biological diversity, solid waste disposal and sanitation” (Planning Commission, 1997, para. 8.3). Climate change was also seen as a developed world problem given that the average per capita emissions from Indians were extremely low – see Figure 29 below for the table from the ninth FYP included in support of that position.
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Figure 29: Table from Ninth Five Year Plan (formatting as per original) Source: Planning Commission (1997, para. 8.2)
Even so the Planning Commission recognised the need for multi-disciplinary research and development related to climate change (para. 8.42) and initiated studies in order to have some scientific inputs to the international negotiations and to meet anticipated reporting requirements from the FCCC (Planning Commission, 1997, para. 8.43). Work on preparing India’s first National Communication to the UNFCCC began in 2001.
By the publication of the tenth FYP (2002-2007), however, climate change had risen in importance such that it was mentioned alongside environmental degradation, deforestation, increasing droughts and desertification as threats to a “sustainability [that] is not an option but imperative”
(Planning Commission, 2002, para. 9.1) in the opening paragraph of the Environment and Forests chapter. The Planning Commission made clear the dual nature of the challenge facing India: “We have to improve our economic growth rate, provide basic minimum life support services to a large section of our population and deal with the problems of poverty and unemployment. At the same time, we have to pay attention to conserving our natural resources and also improving the status of our environment” (Planning Commission, 2002, para. 9.1). One of the natural resources singled out in relation to climate change was forests – the plan acknowledged the important role forests played as sinks by sequestering carbon (Planning Commission, 2002, para. 9.26)
The plan pointed to the voluntary nature of the mitigation measures required of developing countries under the Kyoto Protocol in relation to, for example, “improving efficiency of energy
conversion and utilisation, afforestation, stabilising population growth, limiting methane emissions through proper waste management and phasing out subsidies on power utilisation” (Planning Commission, 2002, para. 9.97). New work proposed under the tenth plan included programmes addressing climate change with international and bilateral financial and technical assistance from the Global Environment Fund (GEF) and from Canadian, Dutch and German NGOs, and gearing up for anticipated programmes under the Clean Development Mechanism (one of the flexible mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol – discussed further in 6.3.1.1 below) in conjunction with credit- seeking developed countries (Planning Commission, 2002: 9.86).
In the energy sector, two important Acts were promulgated in this phase, as noted in Figure 21 above. The first was the Energy Conservation Act (Act 52 of 2001), which mandated the government to establish the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) in March 2002, which was in turn tasked with the crucial objective of lowering the energy intensity of the Indian Economy (BEE, 2015). The second Act, the Electricity Act (Act 36 of 2003), is considered a “landmark development in the history of electricity policy in India” as it radically altered the structure and governance of the sector (Panagariya, 2008). Even though reform itself has been slow, the new act allowed for relatively free entry to generation providers, removal of restrictions on captive generation and the beginnings of a change from the previously dominant single-buyer model (Bhattacharyya, 2005).
Institutional changes were not driven by climate change concerns, but were an internal response to a slew of domestic concerns. The country faced major energy access and security hurdles; these included having the highest number of people without access to electricity (International Energy Agency, 2014), and the concomitant need for large-scale infrastructural investment in new power- generation capacity and the bankruptcy of the vertically integrated State Electricity Boards (Rao, 2001; Bhattacharyya, 2005).
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