Tracks to Transition: India’s Global Climate Strategy

REPORT SUMMARY:

An increasingly competitive geopolitical context is fragmenting global climate governance and traditional modes of multilateral cooperation. Increasingly less centred on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), India’s climate diplomacy has responded by proactively joining and creating new mechanisms to negotiate its low-carbon transition and accelerate climate action. Featuring seven case studies by Indian and international experts, the report assesses India’s posture across four principal tracks: 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 report examines how this policy diversification and innovation is throwing up new opportunities and challenges, especially the need for a comprehensive strategy to balance multiple and often also overlapping international tracks towards a low-carbon transition. It maps both what has been done in the past as well as the avenues towards a comprehensive climate strategy built on greater policy coordination and expanded state capacity for India to engage externally. The report offers research-based, actionable foreign policy options to accelerate India’s green transition and facilitate the road towards its 2030 commitments and its 2070 net zero target.