India’s Approach to Triangular Climate Cooperation
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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.
Q&A with the authors
- What is the core message conveyed in your paper?
Emerging powers such as India, have a great potential to leverage successful domestic experiences with climate action for improved technology and knowledge sharing in the Global South. Triangular cooperation can enable climate cooperation between two developing countries using existing institutional channels of more experienced partners.
This paper argues that there is a lack of empirical evidence required to provide robust policy recommendations on the effectiveness and scope to scale-up triangular climate cooperation. It is a think piece that lays out a research agenda for India’s climate cooperation as a case to better understand how emerging countries engage in triangular efforts, drawing out the need for broader lessons on the motivations, mechanisms, and institutional processes.
- What presents the biggest opportunity?
A country that was once reluctant to partner with Western partners, India is now actively signing triangular agreements with countries such as the US, UK, Germany and France and multilateral institutions such as the UN. At the same time, India is signalling that it wants to be a global leader in climate action. However, triangular cooperation is an avenue of India’s diplomacy that has been largely unexplored in the area of climate and energy.
The time is right for the policy community to study how India approaches triangular cooperation, the role it plays within the country’s larger climate diplomacy and the way forward for partner countries to scale-up and create impactful projects. This can be done by better understanding newer models of climate cooperation with evidence from developing countries.
- What is the biggest challenge?
Traditionally, India’s triangular cooperation has been fragmented, small-scale and ad-hoc. To create impactful climate action through this modality, there is a need for India to have longer-term systematic policies to engage with partner countries. Building institutional spaces that are flexible to understand all partner country needs, while maintaining common norms and standards can be a challenge.
India should use its experiences with triangular cooperation, to understand how to work with partner countries, and create domestic systems for climate cooperation. While challenging, India should not lose out on this opportunity to become an effective global development cooperation partner.
Pooja Ramamurthi
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The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) is an independent, public policy think tank with a mandate to conduct research and analysis on critical issues facing India and the world and help shape policies that advance sustainable growth and development.