Setting the tone at Glasgow, the job ahead in Delhi

Context: With current per capita emissions that are less than half the global average, India’s pledge to reach ‘net zero’ emissions by 2070 has cemented India’s credentials as a global leader.

Challenges associated with adoption of Glasgow summit

• Unsustainable lifestyles and wasteful consumption patterns especially of rich countries.
• Inherent irony of rich countries: In Glasgow, host country pushing other nations to stop using coal  an energy resource which powered its own Industrial Revolution.
  • Subject of oil was not touched, even as automobile emissions are the fastest growing emissions, because it is a defining feature of western civilisation.
• Issues associated with climate negotiations: Negotiating text of Glasgow is not balanced as there is little advance on financial and other support. 
  • It took 40 years to recognise that costs and near-term effects of climate change will hit the poorest countries hardest.
• Concerns associated with developing countries like India: India is following the pathway of western civilisation creating challenge in terms of the scale and the speed of the transformation of the energy system.
  • India is urbanising as it is industrialising: Most of the infrastructure required has still to be built and automobiles are yet to be bought.

Way forward: 

• West must cut consumption: In the West,  drivers of economy  have overridden the beneficial effects of changes in technology reflected in the material footprint and related greenhouse-gas emissions
  • So,climate change has to be addressed by the West by reducing consumption, not just greening it.
• India specific response: India, while moving to renewable energy, e-vehicle use, and a digital economy, needs to focus on sustainable well-being.
• Modifying wasteful trends:  In parallel with the infrastructure and clean technology thrust, the focus on a decent living standard leads to behavioural change in the end-use service, such as mobility, shelter and nutrition.
  • Consumption patterns need to be ‘shifted away from resource and carbon-intensive goods and services.
    • E.g. Mobility from cars and aircraft to buses and trains, and nutrition from animal and processed food to a seasonal plant-based diet’.
  • Along with’ reducing demand, resource and carbon intensity of consumption has to decrease.
    • E.g. Expanding renewable energy, electrifying cars and public transport and increasing energy and material efficiency’.
  • Achieving ‘more equal distribution of wealth with a minimum level of prosperity and affordable energy use for all’.
    • E.g.Housing and doing away with biomass for cooking.
• Government needs to set up focused research groups for the conceptual frame of sustainable well-being. 
• It should analyse the drivers of affluent overconsumption and identify reforms of the economic systems that show how much energy we really need for a decent level of well-being.
• Feasible national acceptance of a ‘floor’ as well as ‘ceiling’ of sustainable well-being.

Conclusion: Decisions at COP26 enable a new set of legislation around ecological limits, energy and land use, including the efficient distribution and use of electricity, urban design and a statistical system providing inputs for sustainable well-being.

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