Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment has published its third working paper, India and climate change mitigation.
It says India has much to gain from signing a climate deal in Copenhagen and urges India to sign up, if the deal is fair and developed countries agree significant emissions cuts.
Please download the paper hereHere is the press release:India should agree new climate deal
October 23, 2009
India should agree to a new climate treaty despite richer countries’ responsibility for rising emissions, a new study says.
It is in India’s interests to help reach a new settlement if it is fair and rich countries agree to significant emissions cuts of their own, Dr Vijay Joshi and Dr Urjit Patel say in research published today by Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.
India’s co-operation could prompt China and the US to follow suit and win “first-mover advantage” in carbon permit allocations, the economists add.
Additional benefits could include a seat on the UN Security Council but failure to sign could leave India saddled with high-carbon assets and trade sanctions.
“It is not inconceivable that India could be isolated, and eventually be forced to accept an inferior ‘done’ deal,” the authors say. “India should regard the issue of climate change mitigation as a diplomatic challenge of getting the right terms, not as a bugbear to be feared and shunned.”
Talks to find a successor to the 1997 Kyoto treaty to stabilise greenhouse gases reach a climax in Copenhagen in December.
Dr Joshi and Dr Patel say the new treaty will only be successful if developing countries sign up because they will soon be contributing two-thirds of global emissions.
Granting India generous emission allowances within the new treaty would be the best way of drawing India in. Permits could then be sold to fund the installation of clean coal technology to existing and new coal-fired power plants. In this way, India would be compensated for the cost of cutting future emissions for several decades.
“It is obvious that coal will continue to be the dominant fuel for power generation in India,” the researchers warn. “But CCS is expensive and will almost double the cost of electricity from coal-fired stations, which consumers in poor countries will simply not be able to pay.”
India has pledged to stop per capita emissions rising above those of developed nations but has so far refused to accept binding emissions cuts.
This promise is not credible because of India’s unwillingness to join a treaty, Dr Joshi and Dr Patel believe.
They say: “India has a strong national interest in helping to secure a climate deal and should reconsider its stance and negotiate to join a mitigation treaty, say in 2020, if it can negotiate a fair deal.”
India and climate change mitigation, Joshi, V and Patel, UR, Working Paper 003 in Climates of Change: Sustainability Challenges for Enterprise, the Smith School’s Working Paper series launched in September 2009.
Dr Vijay Joshi is based at St John’s College, University of Oxford. Dr Urjit Patel is based at Reliance Industries Ltd., Mumbai and Brookings Institution.
The Smith School will publish around 12 working papers annually, showcasing the very best environmental and sustainability research and focussing on the challenges and opportunities for business in tackling climate change and related issues.
India and climate change mitigation is also being published in The Economics and Politics of Climate Change, edited by Dieter Helm and Cameron Hepburn and due to be published by Oxford University Press in October 2009. It will include contributions from leading climate change policy experts, discussions of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change, emissions reduction targets and the contrasting interests of developing and industrialised countries.
The Kyoto treaty was not signed by the US and other large emitters including Australia. India joined in 2002 and Australia signed up when Kevin Rudd won power in 2007.
Excluding Africa, India is more vulnerable than most other countries to climate change, which could disrupt the monsoons essential for agriculture and dry up major rivers.
Developing countries say industrialised nations caused climate change so must cut emissions themselves and fund adaptation elsewhere.
About 44 per cent of Indians are without electricity. Electricity use is about a third of that in China. Energy taxes are already relatively high in India.
Electricity from coal-fired power stations with CCS is between 66 and 100 per cent more expensive than coal from plants without CCS.
Russia won western help in joining the WTO when she signed up to Kyoto.
The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment works with governments, the private and public sectors to find ways of tackling major environmental change. The School was founded in 2008 by a benefaction from the Smith Family Educational Foundation. Its work covers many areas and involves experts from across Oxford University and elsewhere. Professor Sir David King is the Smith School’s first director. Sir David was the UK government’s Chief Scientific Advisor from 2000 to 2007.
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