‘Not an environmental problem, it is a developmental problem’: Experts on how India can navigate the climate change crisis

Climate change is not an environmental problem, it is a developmental problem, said experts at a panel discussion on Business Today’s sustainability summit. They also said that people in general conflate pollution or local pollution with emissions, which impact climate change. Those are two very different problems, they said. 

Speaking at the BT India’s Most Sustainable Companies Summit & Awards, Nilanjan Ghosh, VP and Senior Director, ORF said, “The trade off always existed between growth and environmental concerns. Climate change is the cost of growth and we have ignored that. Climate change is not an environmental problem, it is a developmental problem.” 

“What are the characteristics of a developed nation? Is it only per capita GDP? We have to come out of this reductionist, myopic notion of development. We have to talk in terms of inclusivity, social security, and sustainability. We need climate resilient growth. Climate change affects health, the ecosystem services on which the poor rely on. India has to reconcile between the irreconcilable trinity of economy, society and environment,” he said at the panel discussion titled ‘Climate Diplomacy: Winning the Global Green Game’ that also included Jaivardhan Ramanlal Bhatt, Distinguished Fellow, RIS and Vaibhav Chaturvedi, Senior Fellow, CEEW. 

Bhatt pointed out that any discourse on climate change must also include the assessment of a country’s contribution to climate change. “In 2023, the intergovernmental panel on climate change produced the 6th assessment report and said that starting from 1850 to 2019,the whole of SouthAsia – 24 per cent of the human population, and it includes India – contributed just 4 per cent of emissions. I am not talking about per capita emissions,” he said.

Speaking about the direct impact of development on climate change, Chaturvedi explained why India talks of achieving net zero in the year 2070, while the Europe and US talk of 2050 and China of 2060. “The answer is in both science and social science. The science part is that the climate debate is not about annual emissions, it is about the stock of emissions in the atmosphere. Historically India’s emissions have been very low,” he said, adding that India’s emissions till 2070 will be half of China’s cumulative emissions it will give in the next 30 years.

“So it might seem that China’s net zero years is 10 years ahead of India but even after that their base is so high that the cumulative emissions are double that of India and for Europe and US also, their cumulative emissions are higher than India,” he explained, further adding, “We are not bothered about the year but the cumulative emissions, which for India is very low, which is great.”

Explaining the social science part of the problem, Chaturvedi said, “If India had to advance its net zero year to 2050, we are talking of very drastic emission mitigation in a very fast growing economy. The context is very different when compared to China, Europe and the US. It will be a challenge to decarbonise. There will be impacts on the economy. We want to avoid that at any cost.” 

“So imagine a country with a per capita GDP of $3,000 versus a country like France with the per capita of $40,000…it is going to be immensely challenging. It will impact the society and the economy and we don’t want to do it. We were one of the first think tanks which said that 2050 is no go, and 2070 is ambitious but achievable,” said Chaturvedi, adding that even people in developed nations took out massive demonstrations when their governments hiked prices of fossil fuels to cut down on emissions.