Introduction: Tracks to Transition: India’s Global Climate Strategy

Abstract

A fraught geopolitical context is affecting and fragmenting global climate governance. Increasingly less focused on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change after the 2015 Paris Agreement, India’s climate diplomacy has focused on proactively joining, engaging, and, occasionally, creating new cooperative mechanisms to negotiate pathways towards its 2030 targets and its goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2070. This chapter reviews the multiple—and sometimes also overlapping—tracks towards transition that shape India’s global climate strategy at the multilateral, minilateral, trilateral, and bilateral levels. We place India’s diplomatic behaviour in the context of fragmenting global governance regimes and proliferating international cooperation frameworks. Based on the seven case studies in this report, we describe the drivers and objectives of India’s engagement with four principal tracks. Finally, we conclude by discussing the limitations of continued engagement and proliferation and examine policy and institutional options that may help India draft a viable climate strategy that is aligned with its developmental priorities at home as well as its interests in the Global South.

Once a reluctant climate actor, India has now emerged as an indispensable player in global climate politics. Historically, New Delhi has resisted and rebuffed calls to erode the differentiation between developed and developing countries. Today, to some extent, it continues to centre climate actions around the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR), which its diplomats negotiated and institutionalised in 1992 at the Earth Conference in Rio de Janeiro.

At the same time, India’s climate persona has evolved, especially after the 2015 Paris Agreement (PA). New Delhi works with and leverages existing and emerging international regimes and frameworks to advance widening climate interests. Concurrently, international climate politics has fragmented beyond Conference of Parties (COP) settings, as countries seek new ways to drive climate mitigation and adaptation. As noted by one of India’s foremost climate experts, Nitin Desai, “climate diplomacy has become a major feature of international relations” (2019, p. xiii). Climate and energy issues—concerning both mitigation and adaptation—are becoming a core foreign policy interest, as countries now realise the importance of domestic climate action to minimise and offset the pernicious effects of climate change. International policy on climate is also changing, and India is adapting to and with it (Nachiappan & Xavier, 2023).

India has thus been a proactive player in the “transnationalist” climate camp, engaging beyond the COP-centric climate regime traditionally advocated by the “multilateralist” approach. Responding to the growing need to identify “different types of [international] initiatives”, New Delhi’s evolving behaviour indicates a growing intent to “reconceptualize the UNFCCC[1]less as an authority that attempts to govern climate change in its entirety and more as a coordinating node in a diverse landscape of initiatives” (Betsill et al., 2015, p. 2-3). By engaging and innovating across four external tracks—multilateral, minilateral, triangular, and bilateral—India has embraced the strategic vision that “greater experimentation, which is possible through more diverse configurations and multiple agreements, might suggest new ways to achieve robust global action, as well as verification of those actions” (Bell et al., 2012, p. 61).

What we see now is an India that is diplomatically agile, working across multilateral, minilateral, trilateral, and bilateral tracks to secure financing, technology, and capacity to drive domestic decarbonisation. The case studies in this report show that moving along these four tracks simultaneously will facilitate India’s climate transition to achieve half of its electricity requirements from renewable energy by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2070 (Ahluwalia & Patel, 2022).

But merely engaging and exploring different tracks does not necessarily add up to a strategy. For now, it appears as though tactical engagements may not entirely sync with the long-term institutional engagement with COPs, which has changed since Paris. As India took a bold political position to shift—and approximate—goalposts, it will now have to ensure that these commitments are realised through strategic choices and commensurate institutional capacity to accelerate its pathways to transition.

We argue that New Delhi’s current pace and adaptive posture(s) across these various tracks is not sustainable, warranting a strategic reassessment of diplomatic resources, internal-external policy coordination, and institutional reforms. Rather than taking a presentist approach, one needs to start with 2030 and 2070 targets and work backwards to assess gaps in India’s climate diplomacy.
This introduction reviews the multiple, and often overlapping, tracks to transition that shape India’s global climate strategy at the multilateral, minilateral, trilateral, and bilateral
levels. We begin by placing India’s behaviour in the context of fragmenting global governance regimes and proliferating cooperation frameworks amidst rising geopolitical tensions. This power shift affects trade and other global commons issues, such as health, but also has a particularly pernicious effect on climate, given the urgency of scalable action before 2030.

The second section covers how India has responded to increasing climate fragmentation, putting India’s climate diplomacy in the context of its changing, more opportunistic, and risk-embracing foreign policy towards new frameworks of cooperation, beyond traditional multilateral institutions.

With reference to the seven case studies in this report, section three then describes the drivers and objectives of India’s engagement with four tracks, including challenges faced by i) multilateral adaptation, ii) minilateral innovation, iii) trilateral bridging, and iv) bilateral expansion.

The fourth section discusses how together, these four policy tracks are coalescing as the foundation pillars of India’s embryonic and still evolving global climate strategy. Finally, we discuss the limitations of continued engagement and proliferation and examine policy and institutional options that may help India develop a more effective strategy to accelerate climate action keeping in mind the 2030 and 2070 targets.

1. Beyond a COP-centric System

International climate politics has irrevocably changed. Climate discussions no longer occur only through the United Nations (UN). Like other issues, climate is now being discussed, negotiated, and addressed across a patchwork of institutions and frameworks, which include different constituencies (public and private), are spatially distinct (bilateral, regional, and global), and have varied focus (specific issues or broader economic and security concerns). Surveying the climate landscape, we can map the proliferation of different arrangements—especially, regional and minilateral initiatives—as well as partnerships connecting public and private actors. These arrangements have challenged the authority, legitimacy, and prominence of the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) activities, which is, ostensibly, the bedrock of global climate politics. While these shifts have not provoked uncertainty and anxiety over the role and relevance of the FCCC and COPs, they have complicated the process of how countries decarbonise as well as the international context facilitating or obstructing their transition goals.

To be sure, the effects of fragmentation and pluralism transcend the climate issue. In trade, the increased use of regional and plurilateral trade agreements—beyond the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) ambit—is changing global trade (Hoekman & Mavroidis, 2015). Multi-stakeholder initiatives—combining state and non-state stakeholders such as civil society, academia, and businesses—now discuss cyber and digital issues (Savage & McConnell, 2015). One example is the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, which sets principles for how states should behave online (Paris Call, n.d.). Similarly, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) unites the technology industry, government, civil society organisations, and academics to prevent terrorist activity online (GIFCT, n.d.). The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has transformed global health governance and funding and oversees several initiatives for infectious and chronic diseases (Youde, 2013). Security-focused minilaterals, both trilaterals and quadrilaterals—wherein countries engage on issues such as maritime security, supply chains, infrastructure, and climate change—are sprawling (Patrick, 2015).

What is causing this fragmentation? Strategic factors are of significance. The ongoing shift in the global balance of power and rising tensions over the international order are creating fissures. Rising and middle powers are showing signs of growing frustration with global institutions as well as the apathy of the United States (US) towards the World Health Organization (WHO) and the WTO, which allegedly do not advance American interests or perform credibly. As a response, these powers are resorting to create and back new mechanisms that they can control and wield (Hoekman & Mavroidis, 2021). Washington has also leveraged minilaterals to transcend its existing alliances inherited from the Cold War, particularly in Asia, that could fail, given the prevailing China-focused deterrence demands. What has followed has been a US preference for networks such as the Quad, Australia, United Kingdom and the US (Aukus), and related trilaterals to shape regional order (Tow, 2019).

Also important is the dissatisfaction of rising powers with the existing system and its fallow appetite for reform, which is precipitating new institutions. For instance, the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) grouping, the New Development Bank (NDB), and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which is dominated by Brazil, China, India, and Russia (Qobo & Soko, 2015). International organisations can be captured by a state, or a group of states, making that institution immune to change. Dissatisfaction with certain countries could lead to a situation where either an attempt to reform occurs or a push to withdraw altogether. A few dissatisfied states may create a new institution having realised that it appears to be the best option. Fragmentation is also the product of the democratisation of global governance. This has meant more non-state actors—both non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and businesses—participating openly with authority and knowledge to shape international rules and norms. All these trends have consequently affected climate governance (Florini, 2013).

Global climate governance in the 1990s was characterised by the UNFCCC’s centrality. That process still exists, but it is no longer the only game in town. The US’ 2002 exit from the Kyoto Protocol presaged an era of climate being dealt over arrangements beyond the UN (Lisowski, 2002). Three types of climate fragmentation matter. First, climate has become prominent in other international organisations, like the World Bank or WTO, which are incorporating climate considerations into their work (World Bank, 2022). Climate issues are entering remits like trade, security, and finance to resolve other sector-specific issues. For instance, trade rules can support or thwart the climate strategies of countries by prioritising trade interests over climate concerns. As per WTO rules, countries have an obligation not to discriminate against foreign products or goods made with higher carbon emissions, but doing so spurs decarbonisation (Epps & Green, 2010).

Second, countries that share specific interests and values are forming new climate clubs or using existing institutions—Group of 7 (G7) or Group of 20 (G20)—to address climate issues (Falkner, 2016). The 2007 major economies process on energy security and climate launched by the US was an early initiative to discuss climate between leading economies (U.S. State Department, n.d.). That process continued under US presidents Obama and now, Biden to catalyse climate action. Frameworks like India, Brazil, South Africa (IBSA), BRICS, and the Quad are also addressing climate change now (Paik & Park, 2021). Such clubs or minilateral initiatives provide countries with a more amenable, less contentious, and highly informal atmosphere to drive climate progress (Falkner, 2016).

Third, new forms of governance arrangements formed through partnerships, bringing governments, corporations, and civil society organisations together. These initiatives generally have a narrow focus such as climate financing (for example, the Investors Group on Climate Change) or technologies (for example, the Carbon Sequestration Forum and the Global Methane Initiative). Some frameworks, especially those led by non-state actors, focus on climate justice and accountability, raising awareness of the carbon footprint of countries and firms (for example, the Carbon Disclosure Project). Some initiatives and mechanisms form and operate autonomously, without connecting to the FCCC process, while others derive direct support. Nonetheless, all these institutional innovations—and more—point to an increasingly fragmented global climate landscape.

2. India’s Approach to Climate Fragmentation

India has been central to international climate politics since 1992. Arguably, no other developing country has had more direct influence on FCCC negotiations. India’s position—that developing countries have different responsibilities given historic carbon pathways—laid the foundations for a strategy that lasted nearly three decades: to prioritise equity and deflect climate commitments without adequate support (Nachiappan, 2019). That approach has changed as the FCCC changed, over time moving toward a regime that placed the onus on how all countries can reduce emissions individually and without constraint. The move to accept some voluntary targets at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit to reduce emissions is an important marker not just because of India’s policy shift but also because India would have likely had to engage with different actors to meet its climate pledge—to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 20%–25% against 2005 levels by 2020 (Dubash, 2013). India has since gradually aligned to a regime that prioritises global climate action, not just in developed countries, since Paris in 2015.

Between 2010 and 2015, a new form of climate politics surfaced, one that did not emphasise legally binding commitments or strict differentiation between Annex I and II countries (Youdon & Bajaj, 2022). Instead, the discourse moved to finalise commitments that would be more voluntary, less-differentiated, and bottom-up, which places the onus to set and achieve their emissions reduction goals on countries themselves (Youdon & Bajaj, 2022). These moves coincided with a time when India acknowledged the perils of climate change to its economic growth and development. At the COP17, held in Durban in 2011, India’s environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan agreed that climate change amounted to a pressing and serious challenge for India but one that had to be tackled without compromising poverty reduction (2011).

Rhetorically, Indian officials reinforced equity and CBDR but sought ways to concurrently reduce emissions and advance development. Subsequent COPs from 2011–2015 saw developing countries trying to ensure the FCCC refrains from eroding CBDR while overriding pressures to contribute regardless of historic positioning. At the same time, equity considerations gained urgency. This culminated in the 2015 COP21 in Paris, where all countries signed an agreement that provided space and flexibility to shape and determine their climate contributions to reduce global emissions (Sengupta, 2019).

India’s climate diplomacy post-2015 is also shaped by geopolitical fissures, specifically US climate intransigence during the Trump administration’s utter disregard for the PA that created a vacuum in countries like China and India could fill. After 2015, China intensified climate interactions with the European Union (EU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), African nations, BRICS member states, Japan, and the Republic of Korea through the Second Forum on Carbon Neutrality Goals of China (Yangling, 2023). Like China, India’s climate diplomacy accelerated after Paris. FCCC efforts aside, India has discussed climate bilaterally with the US, United Kingdom, EU, Denmark, France, and Norway, among other partners, and through multilateral frameworks like the Brazil, South Africa, India and China (BASIC) Ministerial Meeting on Climate Change, G20, BRICS, and the International Maritime Organisation.

Going further, Delhi has also driven the cooperation of new climate institutions. For instance, the International Solar Alliance (ISA) with France, to accelerate global solar adoption, and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), to reduce the damage to critical infrastructures (Jayaram, 2018). Besides geopolitics, Indian officials have realised that engaging on climate multilaterally remains an indispensable track to mobilise requisite political, technical, and financial support for accelerating domestic climate action. With the PA, India’s national interests vis-à-vis climate widened—it began to accept some commitments that would yield ‘co-benefits’ or reduce emissions as well as advance economic growth. This approach opened the door to discussing climate across frameworks as other institutions and new frameworks spawned to address climate change.

India’s climate diplomacy has largely been shaped by geopolitics and institutional changes within the FCCC architecture. Strategic considerations have intervened from 2020 onwards. The worsening of great power tensions, particularly between the US and China, has compelled New Delhi to engage strategically on climate with partners like the US and France. The US-India climate partnership has been developing bilaterally and through mechanisms like the Quad, where both countries discuss climate with Japan and Australia. All Quad member states have pledged to focus their efforts on achieving COP targets, covering national emissions, and clean energy deployment (Roy, 2021). There is optimism that the Quad, given its loose informal structure, can gradually include other issues on climate resilience, preparedness, or adaptation, not just mitigation.

Similarly, India and France have established a Roadmap on the Blue Economy to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and maritime resources through greater scientific research, infrastructural cooperation, coastal zone management, and development of new technologies. Paris and Delhi have also established the ISA, which advances solar energy access, particularly in developing countries (Shidore & Busby, 2019). That US-China and India-China ties have deteriorated in the last few years has given both Washington and New Delhi—and others—opportunities to leverage climate to acquire geopolitical and geoeconomic influence over China. Decarbonisation will likely be inflected by geopolitical pressures as countries vie with one another for resources, capital, and talent. Climate diplomacy is one key terrain where such struggles, or climate realpolitik, will occur.

3. India’s Engagements Across Four Tracks

With reference to the seven case studies in this report, this section describes the drivers and objectives of India’s growing engagements with four cooperation tracks, including respective challenges faced: i) multilateral adaptation, ii) minilateral innovation, iii) trilateral bridging, and iv) bilateral expansion. Together, these four tracks reveal how India is navigating, shaping, and exploiting the fragmenting global climate architecture.

3.1 Multilateral Adaptation: Working Within the Existing Regime and Institutions

India’s first strategic track can be defined as multilateral adaptation or seeking opportunities to work within the UNFCCC regime and also through closer engagement with existing multilateral institutions, for example, the International Energy Agency (IEA). Even as India’s climate diplomacy engages proactively and enthusiastically in what is called “forum shopping and institutional proliferation,” it continues to respond to the “centripetal pull” of existing governance arrangements under the UNFCCC (Draguljić, 2019, p. 476).

As a developing country and rising economy, India may not always have been comfortable with the principles and drivers of the existing climate regime as incarnated in the UN-centric, multilateral, inter-governmental, and top-down approach to climate action. So far, India has contributed to the ongoing fragmentation of climate governance by establishing new frameworks around the FCCC, for example, by founding new climate institutions and joining minilateral and bilateral climate partnerships. Yet this should not be confused with India neglecting, ignoring, or undermining the FCCC regime. On the contrary, evidence points to India’s renewed climate activism and contributions that have strengthened the FCCC regime and other international institutions that remain central to climate politics.

The first policy brief, by Jhalak Aggarwal and Sumit Prasad, illustrates India’s multilateral adaptation track with a case study on how India has developed more than adequate capacity to comply with its FCCC commitments to the enhanced transparency framework (ETF). The authors review India’s largely positive track record on reporting as well as domestic policy innovations and the potential to develop an ETF that could be shared under the FCCC mandate with other developing countries. By developing this South-South climate track for ETF capacity-building focused on reporting, verifying, and reviewing performance, India could contribute to the growing urgency of a climate regime information system that has the ability “to respond directly to the information needs of developing countries” (Ghosh & Woods, 2009, p. 24).

The second policy brief refers to another form of multilateral adaptation: India engaging to partner with existing inter-governmental organisations that are developing a new climate-centric profile. This is the case of the IEA, whose growing partnership with India is analysed by Lydia Jayakumar, Hana Chambers, and Siddharth Singh in the second policy brief. Here, we see India keen to cooperate with an international organisation that was founded in 1974 by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) states to insure their energy security. Today, India’s climate diplomacy shows growing comfort in engaging with such traditionally exclusive institutions as they expand both their policy and geographic mandates to renewable energies and climate-centric partnerships, making it imperative to bring India on board. Five years after having joined as an associate member in 2017, India is now exploring full membership of the IEA. Beyond its interest in research, analysis, and information-sharing mechanisms, India is particularly interested in an energy security- and climate action–oriented partnership with the IEA.

3.2 Minilateral Innovation: Tailoring Climate and Geopolitical Cooperation

Alongside multilateral engagement, India has pivoted to create alternative climate frameworks. India’s institutional entrepreneurship—for example, in the form of the ISA or the CDRI—is based on the understanding that these initiatives accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy by enabling clusters of states to focus efforts on specific sectors and geographies. Rather than competing or conflicting, these minilaterals largely complement, and even reinforce, multilateral climate frameworks. India thus presents its minilateral innovations, such as the ISA or CDRI, as its contribution to the global public good, especially for the Global South, while advancing its geopolitical and economic interests. They are seen to increase options for states to engage in à la carte cooperation, depending on their transition interests and requirements.

This is not an entirely new track in India’s global climate engagement. In 2005, it co-founded the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate together with Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, and the US; Canada joined at a later stage. Looking back at that embryonic climate club’s prescient—and controversial—policy mandate, one recognises several key interests that drive India’s minilateral climate track today: “create a voluntary, non-legally binding framework for international cooperation to facilitate the development, diffusion, deployment, and transfer of existing, emerging and longer term cost-effective, cleaner, more efficient technologies and practices” (Lawrence, 2007, p. 200).

Recent examples indicate that these principles, along with the innovative track, have been excavated and expanded in India’s global climate strategy. Set up in 2019, the CDRI is one such example where India has taken the initiative to develop new frameworks beyond—but still aligned with—the FCCC that bridge the climate adaptation interests of developing countries to their growing demands for infrastructure modernisation. India is also pushing for more informal minilaterals, which are evolving as climate-centric clubs for policy coordination. This includes the Leadership Group for Industry Transition (LeadIT), which India co-founded with Sweden, and, more recently, the Global Biofuels Alliance (GBA), which was co-developed with Brazil and the US.

The third policy brief, by Vyoma Jha, analyses the most prominent outcome of India’s minilateral innovation track, the International Solar Alliance (ISA), which was announced as part of India’s Paris commitments. Set up in 2017 as a treaty-based international intergovernmental organisation, it focuses on harnessing the potential of solar rich countries to accelerate climate action. While it could technically also be considered a multilateral or triangular initiative, even in its terminology as an alliance, the ISA reflects a sector-focused, single-country–led, hybrid nature in sharp contrast with the archetype of a regional organisation anchored in international law. Jha describes the ISA as a “deliberate instrument of India’s economic statecraft that syncs its economic priorities (finance and technology for clean energy transition) and national security (energy security) ones.” Yet, she argues, five years on, the ISA’s immense potential for global reach and transition impact remains hobbled by legal, institutional, and financial challenges.

The second minilateral trend in India’s global climate strategy is marked by a realisation that growing geopolitical fissures, marked principally by US-China rivalry, are raising the costs and risks for global governance and climate action. Whether trade, health, or technology, states are increasingly making choices based on geopolitical interests and balance of power calculations. India’s minilateral penchant has consequently grown to address increasingly complex policy sectors and narrowing time horizons for decision-making. For India’s external affairs minister S. Jaishankar, these small and sector-oriented cooperation frameworks are now an increasingly central track in what he calls India’s “strategies for an uncertain world” (2020). Nowhere is this more apparent than with regard to its climate engagements. Unlike in the past, when Indian diplomacy was often reluctant to link sectoral policy areas in global governance—trade, health, education, or even human rights—to geopolitical currents and constellations, New Delhi now appears comfortable and even keen to align and embed its climate interests with different geostrategic frameworks.

Critical mineral supply chains that are essential to the development of green technology are being weaponised with export restrictions and strategic reserves. Energy security remains a key factor shaping climate transition pathways and, consequently, the shape of the future world order. This explains why India has been increasingly comfortable engaging with a small cluster of partners to strategise and coordinate policies on climate, energy, green technology, or critical minerals. Most recently, this was once again apparent as India became the first developing economy to join the US-led Minerals Security Partnership (MSP).

In a similar vein, new minilaterals and cooperation frameworks, such as the Quad, are playing a growing role as climate action becomes a strategically competitive terrain driven by great power politics. The fourth policy brief, by Aparna Roy and Charmi Mehta, illustrates this track with reference to India’s engagement in the Quad’s working groups on climate, critical technologies, and infrastructure. While the authors conclude that the Quad has “not been able to generate a climate narrative so far,” their survey highlights India’s growing comfort with expanding the Quad’s ambit to consultation and coordination on various transition-related priorities, including the development of green technologies, assessment of critical minerals, establishment of clean energy supply chains, and fostering green shipping. The Quad Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Package (Q-CHAMP), announced by the four countries, is perhaps the best example of how India tethers climate interests to specific geopolitically driven minilaterals.

3.3 Trilateral Bridging: Positioning India as a South-South-North Climate Hub

India is reviving “triangular” development partnerships with a particular focus on climate in the Global South. This position was communicated well during the G20 presidency and the Voice of the Global South summit, both of which India hosted in 2023 (Press Information Bureau, 2023). New Delhi utilised these platforms to articulate and promote the image of an India willing to serve as a bridge between the Global North mitigation-focused agenda and the Global South’s particularised interests in adaptation. By expanding the South-South agenda of the 1960s and 1970s, India seeks to forge a new climate identity, presenting itself as a hub to co-develop green technologies and attract and deploy finance to accelerate global climate action.

India’s objective in these triangular South-South-North climate partnerships is two-fold, on two fronts. On the one hand, South-South climate partnerships are expected to i) generate better alignment of transition tracks among developing countries, especially with Brazil, Indonesia, and other rising economies; and ii) increase political and diplomatic support to enhance India’s legitimacy and leverage at multilateral institutions and global climate negotiations. On the other hand, South-North partnerships with India at the centre are expected to i) attract climate finance, technology transfer, and investors to use India as a hub for co-development and innovation; and ii) position India as a springboard for international climate finance for developing countries for access to emerging markets in India and the Global South.

The fifth policy brief, by Pooja Ramamurthi, explores India’s recent attempts at reviving triangular development platforms with moderate success and the opportunities to refocus these frameworks to generate affordable, sustainable, and scalable climate action solutions for developing countries. This track of trilateral bridging offers New Delhi opportunities to partner with the US, the EU, and some of its member states, as well as with Japan. The challenge in these trilateral tracks will now be whether India can go beyond its current focus on one-off projects in low-emission least developed countries and island states and generate partnerships that can accelerate decarbonisation policies in larger, middle-income countries in Asia and Africa.

3.4 Bilateral Issue Linkage: Connecting Climate to the Economy

The final two policy briefs in this report cover the fourth track in India’s global climate strategy: bilateral climate partnerships. As the 2030 targets loom large, India has developed and deepened a series of bilateral climate partnerships. In tandem with its push for reform at multilateral development banks (MDBs), and other international institutions to finance its transition, India is pursuing new green partnerships with select industrialised economies including the US, the EU, Germany, and Japan. More recently, the Gulf economies have emerged as India’s privileged climate partners: in 2023, the joint statement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on climate change as well as the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Saudi Arabia on energy cooperation feature a growing emphasis on renewables, including hydrogen, and broader steps to accelerate the climate transition (Ministry of External Affairs, 2023).

These bilateral frameworks have seen India strategically link climate transition targets to other issue areas, including cooperation to generate investments for the energy, technology, infrastructure, and transportation sectors. At home, before domestic audiences, this track allows India to package climate change mitigation and adaptation as part of a larger economic agenda in line with its developmental imperatives for 1.4 billion people. Across the larger South and Southeast Asian regions, which house almost one-third of humanity, bilateral green partnerships with Global North countries offer India the possibility to assume the lead role of a regional hub for climate transition as a public goods provider. This also creates the potential to lift neighbouring countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia along with itself. Globally, these bilateral climate partnerships create a playing field where India feels more comfortable negotiating and setting the agenda transactionally. This reflects the still exploratory and inchoate nature of bilateral climate partnerships, which also indicates that India is in search of clearer quid pro quos regarding finance or market access as well as shorter policy implementation horizons.

However, with respect to the US-India Climate and Clean Energy Agenda 2030 Partnership, the sixth policy brief by Shayak Sengupta, Medha Prasanna and Peter Jarka-Sellers shows that it is not always distinguishable how India aligns these bilateral partnerships with climate targets. Having evolved over two decades in multiple phases, the US-India Agenda 2030 Partnership now focuses largely on clean energy cooperation with a dual technology and finance track. Yet it remains unclear if and how American technical assistance has spurred India’s energy transition as well as why beyond commercial exchanges there is still a “missing energy transition finance.” The authors recommend India adopt a more strategic approach “underscoring commercial, trade, and financial terms rather than focusing only on technology and development.” The renewed focus on hydrogen and nuclear energy cooperation holds promise in this regard.

The seventh and final policy brief by Axel Nordenstam further illustrates India’s limited strategic clarity and capacity to realise bilateral climate partnerships with the EU. Signed in 2016, the EU-India Clean Energy and Climate Partnership reflects New Delhi’s growing intent to let climate seep into various EU-India cooperation domains. Focusing on green and clean energy technologies, the 2023 establishment of the EU-India Trade and Technology Council (EU-India TTC) at the ministerial level is the most recent example of this climate convergence between Brussels and New Delhi (Delegation of the European Union to India and Bhutan, 2023).

The European Investment Bank’s growing profile in India also reflects how New Delhi is refocusing its bilateral track to look specifically at lending and financing institutions, including the US’ International Development Financial Corporation (DFC), France’s Agence Française de Développement (AfD), and Japan’s Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC). Nonetheless, as Nordenstam cautions, it remains unclear how the EU-India partnership aligns with the growing number of green partnerships that India has been signing with individual EU member states, including France, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. While both levels are not incompatible, there are growing areas of overlap and redundancy, which New Delhi must avoid.

4. Deepening Tracks: Priority Areas, Policy Coordination, and Institutional Capacity

The seven policy briefs in this report reflect four transition tracks in India’s global climate strategy. These parallel climate diplomacy dimensions include i) multilateral adaptation by working within the UNFCCC regime and existing institutions, ii) minilateral innovation by tailoring climate and geopolitical cooperation, iii) trilateral bridging by positioning India as a ‘triangular’ South-South-North climate hub, and iv) bilateral expansion by connecting climate to economic cooperation through new green partnerships. The authors examine specific challenges and opportunities and propose recommendations for India to pursue a more effective international engagement strategy across these four tracks.

This section takes a step back to i) take a holistic view of these recommendations, ii) draw lessons from our year-long exercise and consultations with the contributing authors, policy stakeholders, and experts in India’s climate diplomacy, and iii) propose policy options for India to increase foreign policy coordination and institutional capacity to better align domestic and external priorities towards its 2030 and 2070 targets. There are two broad takeaways from our exercise which warrant more attention from policymakers. Both of these are only marginally covered in our report but will be the focus of a specific research agenda at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress.

4.1 The Growing Centrality of Climate Finance and Private Sector Networks

Our first takeaway relates to the growing centrality that climate finance must play across all four tracks of India’s climate diplomacy, especially through MDBs and emerging private capital, asset owners, and industry networks. Achieving the Paris goal of 1.5°C will require at least USD 4 trillion for the development and deployment of clean technology by 2030 (Bordoff & O’Sullivan, 2022). Our report uncovers how India engages on climate with existing and emerging institutions. It is illustrative, but not exhaustive, of India’s efforts and campaign to work with other countries toward decarbonisation. India’s activities also extend across other organisations and frameworks tackling climate, focusing specifically on finance and investment.

MDBs, such as the World Bank and AIIB, are driving intergovernmental and global conversations to generate and deploy capital for climate purposes. Both the MDBs and other new climate finance cooperation frameworks are critical as they perform a range of different functions that may help India accelerate its climate transition and achieve its targets. They can mobilise and deploy more finance to India, reduce the cost of capital necessary to finance projects, enhance the creditworthiness of climate projects which will reduce risks and bring additional sources of capital to the table, and drive regulatory change by forcing domestic climate agencies to adhere to higher standards and rules vis-à-vis climate risk and transparency.

India will matter greatly to these discussions given its economic size, its growing contribution to carbon emissions, and its potential to absorb financing to accelerate the development of low-carbon energy through technologies as well as public and private investments. Financing aside, getting MDBs to transform their lending operations to focus more on climate will also require institutional change, which India will have to shape and influence (Ahluwalia & Patel, 2022). Beyond MDBs, India will also have to do more to engage the International Monetary Fund and other related green banking and green finance cooperation frameworks. For example, compared to China, Malaysia, Singapore, and other Asian countries, India remains largely absent from the work streams and task forces of the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).

India’s climate diplomacy must also engage the private-sector– and industry-led climate finance networks from which it is currently largely absent. The Singapore-based Asia Investors Group on Climate Change (AIGCC), for example, which is part of the Paris Aligned Asset Owners initiative, has worked closely with Chinese and Japanese stakeholders to build benchmarks for green transition but its Indian engagements remain limited. Other such private frameworks warranting greater attention from India include Climate Action 100+, the Leadership Group for Industry Transition, and the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ).

4.2 The Growing Centrality of the Global South

The second takeaway from this exercise relates to the growing centrality that the Global South must play across all four tracks of India’s climate diplomacy, especially large developing as well as least-developed economies in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The case studies in this report reflect that the majority of India’s long-term climate diplomacy has involved engagement with larger, wealthier industrialised countries, focusing on access to foreign technology innovation and financial investments. This track is in line with India’s traditional stance that countries historically responsible for emissions must invest more in the low-carbon transitions of emerging countries. More recently, India has begun to realise that to emerge as a climate leader, it must reposition itself and rethink its engagements to deepen partnerships in the Global South.

The motivations for this are twofold. First, there is a need for countries in the Global South to emerge as a singular voice to demand concrete financial and technical assistance from wealthier countries. India could play a critical role in enabling a united voice for the Global South if it follows through on its recent initiatives at the G20 summit in New Delhi. Second, India strategically wants to improve its influence across countries both in terms of market access as well as soft power. New Delhi’s current engagements with the Global South tend to be projects that are one-off, small-scale, and in least developed countries or small island nations. However, through its rapid deployment of renewable energy, energy efficiency, and smart agriculture initiatives, India has demonstrated how a large emerging economy can move to vigorously tackle climate change. It is now time for India to showcase these policies, technologies, and financing innovations as models for other large economies to emulate. This would mean engaging more broadly with the Global South, towards more ambitious and scalable projects that require building institutional capacity and active civil society networks and private sector investments. Second, India is one of the countries that are most vulnerable to the calamities of climate change. This means that India can build collaborative platforms to champion more funding for climate adaptation research and development through a shared sense of purpose with other vulnerable countries.

4.3 Policy Coordination and Institutional Capacity

The two takeaways above are examples of what India could use as benchmarks to regulate the level and focus of its engagements across the four tracks. However, such strategic assessments will be ineffectual unless accompanied by investment to strengthen institutional capacity at home.

India’s climate diplomacy has a long history of being obstructed by organisational differences and a lack of top-down decision-making processes. Aditya Pillai and Navroz Dubash thus argue that India’s climate policy is now defined as “climate nodes spread across government, stitched together by relatively weak and unstable cross-ministerial coordination and strategy bodies” (2021, p. 94). This is one of the characteristics of developments in recent years where international engagements have often informed and set domestic priorities with a lack of obverse capacity to set interests at home and then pursue them abroad. We thus have a “centralised but thinly institutionalised decision-making structure in the PMO [2] harvesting ideas for domestic action as part of a concerted effort to re-make India’s image on the world stage” (Pillai & Navroz, 2021, p. 103). The inter-ministerial Apex Committee for Implementation of Paris Agreement (AIPA), which was announced in 2020 under the chairmanship of the secretary of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), seeks to address these gaps internally. But this will not solve the growing gap between India’s domestic policy priorities and the rapidly fragmenting and increasingly complex global climate governance landscape.

Bridging this gap requires designated officials with the mandate and expertise on global climate issues who can draft, manage, and coordinate India’s international policies on climate change. Other competencies could include tracking India’s progress vis-à-vis Paris commitments and giving sufficient attention to climate adaptation, not just mitigation. Working with international financing institutions (IFIs) and MDBs as well as the private sector to unlock climate financial flows, supporting clean energy innovation efforts bilaterally with key partners and through IFIs like the World Bank, and understanding the climate dimensions of sectors like aviation, biodiversity, health, and trade are other key competencies.

As evidenced in this report, the climate terrain is fragmenting. Advancing both bilateral and minilateral agendas requires close consideration of where bilateral interests intersect with those of other countries such as Japan, the European Union or developing countries in the Global South. Therefore, countries are now engaging strategically on climate matters and discussing various issues in climate clubs. Moreover, how India negotiates at COPs will increasingly have to comport with its climate-related activities within mechanisms like the Quad, the issues it focuses on through bilateral climate partnerships with the US, EU, and Japan, and its engagements with other developing countries on issues like renewable energy or infrastructure financing. Increasing coordination and building capacity will become crucial.

From playing a leading role in India’s climate diplomacy in the late 2000s, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) is now one of the few foreign ministries among major economic powers without a dedicated department focused on climate. The ministry’s United Nations Economic and Social (UNES) division only has a limited role that is mostly restricted to the UNFCCC. While the MoEFCC remains the lead ministry on all climate-related matters, it would benefit from closer policy coordination and greater delegation of responsibilities to the MEA. As per one assessment, in 2020, the MEA only had two personnel with listed climate responsibilities (out of a total of 62 across the Government of India) (Pillai & Navroz, 2021, p. 109).

We propose four measures to bolster India’s climate diplomacy and support the strategic reassessments proposed in this report across the four international tracks towards transition. These measures could expand institutional capacity to ensure that India’s international climate interests and priorities are safeguarded by organisational, financial, and expert human resources.
Appoint a prime minister’s special envoy for climate cooperation. This position was in existence between 2007 and 2010, held by former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran. He played a central role in preparing India’s international negotiation stances and coordinating between actors at the domestic and international levels. Whether in a similar dual, international and domestic, substantive (maximalist) role or a limited external and mostly representational (minimalist) role, such a high-level, senior expert, and cabinet ministerial–ranked position would help India voice its climate interests internationally. This is in line with what is already done by other special envoys representing the top-most leaders of China or the US. While other countries have opted for a foreign-ministry level representative (in the case of Brazil and, until recently, the UK), the envoy’s direct link to the prime minister would confer greater standing abroad and legitimacy at home.
Institute a new division on climate cooperation at the MEA. In line with other divisions created in recent years for new policy arenas (for example, Indo-Pacific and new emerging and strategic technologies), the MEA could institute a new climate division focused on international climate cooperation, headed by a joint secretary and with dedicated staff from the Indian Foreign Services, and on deputation from other ministries and civil services.

Create a secretary-level position dedicated to climate diplomacy in the MEA. This
position would be at par with the four existing secretary-level positions instituted in the MEA (besides the foreign secretary) focusing on east, west, economic relations, and consular/diaspora affairs. This secretary-ranked position would also help its holder to define, coordinate, and implement India’s climate diplomacy in coordination with the MoEFCC—and at par with other secretary-ranked officials from the other nodal ministries involved in India’s climate transition efforts—from multiple policy angles that all require international engagements.

Establish a ‘climate wing’ at India’s principal diplomatic missions abroad to track and accelerate key bilateral climate partnerships. India’s missions traditionally have diverse sectoral wings to define, propose, and implement policy to strengthen bilateral relations. India’s missions in Washington DC, Brussels, and Tokyo, among its largest, have a variety of specialised wings including political, economic, defence and military, trade and commerce, and science and technology affairs. The MEA could institute a specialised climate wing at these missions to track and facilitate progress in implementing the growing number and mandate of bilateral green partnerships. These climate wings in key capitals could also lead outreach to MDBs and other multilateral climate institutions where India is often thinly represented if not absent. These wings should be staffed by both generalist officials from the Indian Foreign Service as well as other experts on deputation from different civil services and ministries, especially with training in international law, science, economics, and other disciplines that can bolster India’s analytical and negotiation power abroad.

5. Conclusion

India has spent the last few years expanding engagements and diversifying and decentralising its climate diplomacy. These moves reflect New Delhi’s adaptability and sophistication, straddling and balancing different institutional burdens. However, the focus now must turn toward taking stock and assessing how these multiple climate tracks add up to a coherent low-carbon strategy toward 2030 and 2070. This report reveals the drivers, activities, and implications of India’s behaviour across the globally splintering climate landscape. Some engagements like the Quad, US-India, and EU-India are tactical, driven by strategic considerations and interests, whereas others are political and developmental like FCCC, ISA, IEA, and various triangular efforts shaped by India’s positioning as a developing country keen to do its part on mitigation without sacrificing development concerns.

To achieve its 2030 targets with long-term strategic commitments that move toward the 2070 net zero objectives, India will have to emphasise both development concerns and politics at COPs, reform IFIs and MDBs to support developing countries as they decarbonise, and urge developed countries to not craft and execute climate transitions at the expense of all other countries who will lack the capital and technologies to undertake that effort. The international politics of climate change is increasingly moving toward key jurisdictions—the US, EU, and China—that are deploying large amounts of capital and instituting unprecedented industrial policies to decarbonise their economies and societies. The distortionary effects of these transitions for the rest of the world are immense. New Delhi must raise political awareness regarding the prohibitive costs of such transitions and urge these countries to collectively move toward a greener future while concurrently working with ‘like-minded partners’ through specific frameworks on issues like climate technologies and financing.

As the climate crisis unfolds, India has little choice but to engage across these four tracks and multiple frameworks. As mentioned above, India will have to continue emphasising annual COPs, which remain the political anchor underpinning global climate action. Bilateral climate partnerships, like with the US and EU, could become subject to political winds, with progress hinging on the pace and scope of the larger relationship and how they view India, either strategically or instrumentally. Such relationships are driven by interests, which means that they are vulnerable to domestic political shifts and changes that could reorient core interests. Thus, India must remain vigilant to protect its interests. These political currents also inflect specific minilateral partnerships, like the Quad, which are centred on mutual interests, so their importance might wane over time.

For bilateral green partnerships to triumph and sustain, India might have to reform its domestic climate sector and market to allow greater climate trade and engagement with the US and EU private sectors. Regulatory reform might have to flow from progressive bilateral climate engagements. Opportunities, however, abound on the triangular front and for India to link and connect developed and developing countries. Saddled by domestic political constraints, neither the US nor the EU can help craft an ambitious climate agenda for the Global South. India appears to be the natural partner that could support liberal, mostly Western, groups—like the Quad—as well as illiberal, mostly non-Western, coalitions—like the BRICS—to undertake climate-focused initiatives. Moreover, demands to build cost-effective and competitive climate-focused infrastructure will only increase across the developing world even though we currently lack the coalitions and arrangements that could drive that transition.

Our report, and the seven case studies herein, are a small contribution to a strategic ends-and-means exercise that will have to be expanded across the government. This exercise will generate granular insights on where India should expand, refocus, engage, or disengage and, at the same time, help decision-makers to set specific policy targets across an increasingly large and complex landscape of multilateral, minilateral, trilateral, and bilateral climate initiatives. The last two policy briefs, which illustrate the rising number of bilateral tracks with reference to the US and EU, are perhaps the best reflection of a growing urgency to differentiate between tracks conducive to short- and long-term targets.

On the one hand, bilateral climate partnerships are, in principle, easier to reach and faster to implement, offering a tempting tactical track for India to achieve its immediate 2030 targets. On the other hand, both old and new multilateral institutions offer a strategic track towards accelerating net-zero in the long run, the latest by or ideally before 2070. These large frameworks are generally more difficult to sustain; they require large political, diplomatic, and technocratic investments in complex negotiations based on consensus and compromise. Minilateral and trilateral frameworks further add to this challenge of prioritising between multiple and often contending tracks. India’s climate future will likely be shaped by the diplomatic capacity and choices it makes on these international trade-offs between short- and long-term policy horizons, leading to a series of layered engagements.

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