Climate agreements and India: aligning options and opportunities on a new track |
| |
Authors: | P R Shukla Subash Dhar |
| |
Institution: | (1) Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Ahmedabad, 380015, India;(2) System Analysis Division, UNEP Risoe Centre, Risoe DTU, Roskilde, Denmark |
| |
Abstract: | The Climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009 witnessed the emerging power of Brazil, South Africa, India, and China
(BASIC). Although still focussed on domestic development goals, BASIC countries have made important steps toward a greater
engagement in the global climate agenda. For India, the shift was marked by a voluntary, but conditional, target of reducing
emission intensity, away from the past normative position based on “equal per capita,” emissions entitlements. The new track
aims at finding cost-effective mitigation strategies that align national development goals and climate actions. This paper
examines the mitigation potential of a domestic sustainable development policy using a suite of integrated assessment models.
The long-term goal is to keep temperature increase below 2°C. This article shows that it is possible to match domestic development
goals and climate mitigation. Win–win options exist and side benefits—in terms of energy security and local pollution—are
important. However, development policies are not sufficient to achieve the desired emissions reductions. We find that it is
necessary to introduce a constraint on the carbon budget. The price of carbon that emerges is however much lower than in a
conventional mitigation scenario. Finally, this paper proposes to shift the negotiations away from the current climate-centric
focus toward “development,” in order to reduce conflicts and deliver greater global and national benefits. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|