India faces an increasing barrage of natural hazards that are often compounded by stressors from sociopolitical machinations in the neighbourhood. The unrest in Bangladesh and the Rohingya refugee crisis are two examples of how vulnerabilities of neighbouring countries become India’s economic and climate vulnerabilities, while also posing a national security threat. In all this, India cannot afford to deviate from its dream of sustained and sustainable economic development with steady progress towards its net zero goals. India has made progress on climate action and can build upon that.

Two things stand out despite the onslaught of various climate disasters across seasons and years. First, India has stayed focussed on economic growth and its climate commitments to reduce the energy intensity of its GDP and the carbon intensity of its energy production. Second, India has actually reduced the socio-economic vulnerabilities of its population to hydroclimatic hazards through initiatives such as improved employment opportunities for the most vulnerable, infrastructure, and education for girls. Improved weather and climate forecasts along with national disaster management are also key in reducing the loss of lives, livelihoods, and property from these hazards.

India will no doubt build on these positives in the coming years. But it needs to strategise carefully on the effectiveness and efficiency of its investments in education, agriculture, energy, infrastructure, health, water, transportation, and such. As a developing country with limited natural and energy resources, India is always vulnerable to global geopolitical shocks in addition to local geopolitics.

On-ground implementation

India can accelerate its progress to sustainable development and net zero by coordinating partnerships between public, private, and academic sectors. The gaps in climate adaptation and mitigation need education, research, training, and operationalisation of a well-defined framework for climate solutions in key sectors. The last mile implementation requires some strategising as well, since on-ground implementation of solutions will require trained extension agents.

Also Read | Tackling climate change in India needs some team-building

Implementation can be systematised and streamlined with a regional adoption of the well-developed framework by Project Drawdown. This will require an effective and efficient partnership between governments, private sector, and academia.

Here are a few pointers to how limited financial resources can be managed with the demographic advantage of a large youth population to chart a sustainable pathway to net zero.

Sectoral emissions reduction

The major imperative is, of course, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from each of the top emitting sectors—energy, agriculture, industries, transportation, and buildings.

India is fairly typical in its emissions pie chart. Nearly 75 per cent of its total emissions are from the energy sector even though energy is used in other sectors such as industries, buildings, and agriculture. Agriculture is the next biggest emitter at nearly 14 per cent. Industries come in at about 9 per cent. The waste sector contributes about 3 per cent, but these represent opportunities to reduce emissions and enhance natural sinks of carbon.

Energy production hogs most of the emissions space. Reducing emissions here is critical. India’s reliance on coal is expected to continue for at least two more decades. Ramping up renewables while finding economically and sociopolitically palatable ways to phase out coal as rapidly as possible is a high priority. India must focus on improving efficiencies of energy use in industries, households, transportation, commercial buildings, appliances, etc. The co-benefits of phasing out coal can hardly be overemphasised—health, well-being, and productivity are on top of clean energy gains.

Another major emitter of greenhouse gases is agriculture. Fortunately, increasing farmers’ incomes and increasing food production can be accomplished with a combination of sustainable agricultural practices such as agroforestry, natural or regenerative farming, and nature-based solutions combining livestock, grazing, and farming. These can reduce emissions and enhance soil carbon, which in turn yields a virtuous cycle of increased nutrient retention, enhanced water-holding capacity in the soil, increased crop yields, and reduced soil erosion. These natural solutions are also the best way to protect ecosystems and biodiversity while enhancing farm incomes.

Reduce waste

India is unique in terms of methane emissions from rice paddies and livestock. Reducing emissions here have many well-established ways that require diligent implementation using government policies and incentives.

One low-hanging fruit in the agricultural and food sector is to reduce waste. Globally, nearly 6 per cent of total emissions are due to food waste. India can drive an incentive programme here to encourage lower food waste. Crop burning continues to be a baffling problem that needs urgent resolution.

Industries and transportation have to do their part as well. Industries have their work cut out in terms of increasing their efficiency, reducing energy demand, moving towards circular economies, and reducing waste. Upstream emissions from acquiring materials and manufacturing to downstream emissions from shipping and retailing must be tracked carefully to reduce emissions at all stages.

An electric vehicle charging centre at Cubbon Park in Bengaluru on September 3. Accelerating electrification and clean energy sources for EV charging stations is the need of the hour.
| Photo Credit:
Sudhakara Jain

India is making solid strides in putting electric vehicles on the road with attendant plans for a network of charging stations and electrifying light and heavy vehicles. Clearly, electrification and clean energy sources for charging stations must accelerate.

While buildings are not top emitters right now, with a growing middle class and warming temperatures in many regions, the energy demand for buildings will grow in the coming years. The penchant for glass facades needs to transition to green building ideas with a focus on energy efficiency, enhanced natural heating, cooling, and lighting. The government has a big role to play in setting policies and incentivising the adoption of green building codes.

India scores high in the progress it has made on commitments in the Paris Agreement. And yet, it has a long way to go in the transitions needed to meet its net zero goals and in building resilience to natural and induced shocks along the way. Enhancing carbon sinks are as important as reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The blue economy

While there is impressive research in carbon capture, utilisation, and sequestration in India, as well as big plans for a blue economy, India lags in land use strategies to reduce emissions and enhance natural sinks. Blue economy is the recovery and protection of subaquatic vegetation along the coasts. India’s over 7,200 km of coastlines offer a massive opportunity as a carbon sink. Natural sinks can sequester 3 to 10 times more carbon than land forests and they do not burn down like land forests can. They also provide protection against cyclones and enhance oxygen in the water and marine ecosystem habitats. Subaquatic forests can also serve as ecotourism sites.

India has increased green cover on land in the last two decades, but the way forward can include growing biofuels on degraded lands and better-planned urban development. Land use strategies can be synergised with sustainable agriculture and food production, especially in meat and fishery production that have high carbon footprints and deleterious effects on air and water.

Humanity as a whole will have irreducible emissions from all these sectors, requiring scalable carbon capture methods to be developed and implemented. India reportedly has sufficient long-term storage capacity for captured carbon. Many proposed engineering approaches to enhance carbon uptake over land and water will become indispensable to meet net zero goals. This is true for all countries.

Some of these efforts will need cross-border cooperation since international waters will be involved. India can be a regional leader in building climate resilience and ocean-based climate solutions for the entire region.

Public, private, and academic partnerships are the way ahead. India’s massive investments in education, weather and climate enterprises, disaster management, renewable energy, infrastructure, and so on need even more support from the private sector and academia as well as national labs related to the key sectors. The cooperation between these sectors has to be integrated into all research, development, and operationalisation activities.

Also Read | The world is grappling with a climate challenge that has defied predictions

India’s climate hazards are all location-specific with local risk factors such as heatwaves, droughts, floods, landslides, wildfires, and so on. These require to be mapped as hyperlocal risks that affect agriculture, water, energy, transportation, infrastructure, etc. The consequences of not having such hyperlocal risk information can lead to negligence in actions needed for disaster risk mitigation as seen recently during the Wayanad landslides. Blame games only result in ad hoc actions that may not really build real resilience.  There is also a tendency to forget the disasters over time instead of rebuilding better structures.

This is where academia can form sustained partnerships to bring science to serve societies. These partnerships can be led by the central institutions such as the IITs and IISERs with local institutions as full partners. The partnerships can be split into key verticals such as agriculture, water, energy, health, transportation, buildings, infrastructure, and national security.

Risks are never zero

Each cluster of institutions will focus on one vertical with vibrant exchanges between clusters for education, training, research, and resource optimisation. Each cluster can provide effective and efficient funding mechanisms to ensure the transition from research to operations in each sector. Each cluster should have the requisite industry and private sector collaborations, even co-located research centres, to ensure a complete transition to operations when technological readiness is ensured.

Sustainability will require predictive information, and India needs to optimise its investment in climate prediction areas. Risks are never zero but being reliably forewarned and being fully prepared can minimise loss of life, property and infrastructure and also speed up post-disaster recovery and resilience.

Resilience here means that any deviations from the sustainable development pathway will be corrected to return as expediently as possible to this pathway. Only this approach can ensure steady progress towards net zero with security in food, water, energy, and health as well as national security.

Raghu Murtugudde is Visiting Professor, IIT Bombay and Emeritus Professor, University of Maryland.