Why India Shouldn’t Sign On To Net Zero

Context: India signing on to net zero means to accede to further over-appropriation of the global carbon budget by a few.

Why India shouldn’t sign on to net zero emissions by 2050?

• Timing not the critical criteria: Timing of world’s carbon dioxide emissions reaching net zero is not critical parameter for safety of humanity.
  • As per recent IPCC report, global cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide to be capped at global carbon budget.
• The target is dead-on-arrival: The top three emitters — China, U.S. and European Union, even after taking account of their net zero commitments and their enhanced emission reduction commitments for 2030, will emit more than 500 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide before net zero.
  • These three alone will exceed the limit of about 500 billion tonnes from 2020 onwards, for even odds of keeping global temperature increase below 1.5°C.
• No basis in any treaty/science: Neither the Paris Agreement nor climate science requires that net zero be reached individually by countries by 2050.
• Economic prioritization: Net zero targets are product of specific economic models designed to achieve the Paris goals by the “lowest cost” methods, foregoing equity and climate justice.
• Inherent bias: They front-load emission reduction requirements on developing countries, despite their already low emissions, to allow developed world to backload its own, buying time for its own transition.
• India’s minimal responsibility: India is responsible for no more than 37% cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial era, even though it is home to more than a sixth of humanity.
  • India’s per capita emissions are less than half the world average, less than one-eighth of the U.S.’s, and have shown no dramatic increase like China’s post 2000.

Way forward

• India must stake its claim to a fair share of global carbon budget. Technology transfer and financial support, together with “negative emissions”, shall remain policy priority before India.
• Responsible use of coal, its major fossil fuel resource, and oil and gas, to bootstrap itself out of lower middle-income economy status and eradicate poverty, hunger and malnutrition for good.
• India’s resource-strapped small industries sector, which provides employment and livelihoods to the majority of the population outside agriculture, needs expansion and modernisation.
• Agriculture sector, the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions for India after energy, needs to double its productivity and farmers’ incomes and build resilience.
• Infrastructure for climate resilience in general is critical to future adaptation to climate change.