Rework The Economics

India should not take action to combat climate change. As I said this to a group of climate change envoys from various European countries, I could notice signs of confusion on their faces. I explained to them my reasons. Development is the most significant challenge that a country like India faces. We know today that this growth should also be inclusive and sustainable. And if we achieve this, we hit a sweet spot—our actions to reduce local pollution and to drive green livelihoods will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In this way, our Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which puts together the package of actions to reduce emissions, would be based on co-benefits; development, if done right, will also address the urgent crisis of climate change.

We know that it is in our interest to achieve this twin goal. We are vulnerable to climate change impacts. But if we do development differently, it would help us avoid the pitfalls of marginalising actions designed solely for climate change. It would help us deepen the public acceptability for taking steps that may not be easy or convenient. I am not sure if I convinced the group of hardened climate negotiators, as their world is narrowly focused on counting greenhouse gases. But let me explain this to you.

India, like many other countries, has to ensure growth. This means providing millions with employment, healthcare, education and housing, and increasing energy supply. This has to be our development priority. But development will require taking action that meets the needs of all. So this calls for a change in strategy. We cannot afford a capital and resource-intensive pathway that adds to environmental degradation and inequity in society. We have learnt over the past decades that we cannot adopt the Western countries’ approach to first pollute and then clean up. We just do not have the financial wherewithal to keep repairing the damage. We have to reinvent growth, and this is what many policies in India have done: they have built inclusive sustainability as an outcome of the development policy. This is a unique opportunity for countries like India—not to pit development against climate action but to subsume it within policies designed for growth.

For instance, we know we cannot “fix” air pollution without redesigning mobility because personal vehicles, however clean, take up road space and add to pollution and congestion. The Western world has taken the path to subsidise and electrify personal vehicles, which is leading to disruption in industries as they strive to rework supply chains and re-deploy labour for electric cars. We have the opportunity to think of another route—one that reinvents mobility so that we can move people and not cars. This means investing in electric buses and affordable transport like paratransit and two-wheelers. India’s NDC must be about upscaling and integrating low-carbon public transport, and not just counting electric cars. The policy is driven by cleaning up local air but has the added benefit of combating climate change.

It is the same with the hard-to-abate industries. We know from experience that our industry will invest in technology that saves costs and increases competitiveness. The cement industry, for instance, switched to using fly ash, not to decarbonise but to use waste as raw material, substitute limestone and reduce the costs of energy. The future of low-carbon industrialisation lies in similar win-win solutions, such as the reuse of waste materials from iron ore slag to biomass to refuse-derived fuel from municipal garbage—all designed to reduce the use of coal and other fossil fuels and to improve efficiency.

Most importantly, we must re-engineer the idea and design of a green economy. We cannot afford to mouth platitudes of green employment, knowing fully well that the renewable energy or electric vehicle transition, per se, does not mean more livelihoods. In fact, recent news shows that thousands of jobs have been lost in the UK because of the shift from blast to electric arc furnaces. This is why we see the pushback in Western countries, where much has been said without substance, and this has prompted people, worried as they are about climate change, to care more about livelihoods.

India’s opportunity is in the reworking of its economy so that local resources can be used for local livelihoods. If we do this, we can sequester carbon in trees and soil, build resilience in society, withstand extreme weather shocks and also stem migration. We cannot afford an economy that is driven only by the gross domestic product (GDP), which extracts and exports produce, and not by gross nature product (GNP), which invests in natural resources for livelihoods locally. Our plan for climate change is the one that works for people and the Planet. DTE

Views expressed are personal