India’s Approach to Triangular Climate Cooperation

Abstract

Climate finance, knowledge sharing, and technology transfer mechanisms continue to emphasise North-South channels, despite power shifts in global governance. This paradigm is proving insufficient for developing countries to catalyse and implement cost-effective climate solutions. There is an opportunity to explore alternate mechanisms for improved climate action such as triangular cooperation. Triangular cooperation is a mechanism where two developing countries cooperate, facilitated by a multilateral agency or industrialised country. Triangular cooperation creates a possibility for emerging economies like India to leverage successful experiences from their own development to implement appropriate, context-specific climate action across the Global South.

Over the past decade, India has actively entered several triangular agreements with Northern partners and multilateral agencies, often highlighting climate mitigation and adaptation as key areas of focus. This paper calls for a research agenda to understand the motivations for India and its partner countries to focus on decarbonisation in its triangular agreements. The sectors and regions that are most suitable for cooperation and the institutional channels of engagement must be explored more thoroughly. Studies on the role that civil society and the private sector play to create strong linkages for knowledge sharing and technology transfer are critical to successful triangular cooperation. This research agenda may not only guide Indian policymakers but also provide a broader action plan for how climate finance and resources from the North can be more effectively deployed to accelerate decarbonisation in the Global South. Therefore, effective policy recommendations based on empirical studies from an emerging country perspective are critical to creating triangular partnerships that are institutionally robust, impactful, and truly horizontal.

This discussion paper also highlights how triangular climate cooperation is another lens through which India’s stance in international cooperation can be understood. It is important to understand whether India plays a passive role in such agreements, merely facilitating the agenda of donor countries, or whether India actively shapes the climate agenda, bringing to the table financial and technical norms, standards, and resources? Thus, it is important to study what factors drive India to navigate triangular arrangements, and what their interests are in doing so amongst other forms of climate diplomacy.