The real test of our commitment to combating the environmental crisis is how we are responding to it. Sadly, countries across the globe, including India, have failed to step up and be counted

The year 2017 registered a detracted track record in the state of the environment as well as in our responses to the problem. In India, as well as globally, while a worsening environment was afflicted by extreme natural disasters — many with potential links to climate change — and consequent livelihood crises in the form of farm distress and migration, the solutions so embraced, took us several steps backward.

This is brought out most clearly by the numerous global environmental conferences that have taken place over the year. Instead of owning up responsibility for harmful environmental degradation and climate change and taking serious mitigation action, the tendency has been to encourage polluters to remain complacent; allow countries to pass-off their dubious environmental track-record as achievements; foist off their burden of action on private players and businesses; and come up with ideas to ensure incoming climate disasters rather than preventing them and seeking to make business out of doubtful ‘technology’ to mitigate environmental harms.

In the mess that environmental and climate negotiations have become, it is not that all countries,  such as India, necessarily act out of opportunistic or malign intentions. To India’s credit, it must be acknowledged that the climate policy under the Modi Government has been hauled out of its erstwhile slumber and dynamised to such an extent that India has become a leader in climate negotiations — the pre-Modi climate policy was highly bureaucratic and focused on building more bodies and institutions rather than consolidating the country’s gains in global negotiations or bringing the climate discourse to the Indian public.

But this success is a virtue of India’s diplomatic and foreign policy prowess and of national narrative-building, instead of climate or environmental policy per se, coupled with the general nature of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations that focuses more on visions, talks/solutions, partnerships and very little on any concrete improvements.

Whatever positive initiatives can be anticipated for our climate action or environmental future have become overwhelmingly dependent on the mercy of private investments and circumstantial fall in cost of new technology. Pro-active initiatives to phase out coal and other polluting substances have been missing.

India’s success in the renewable energy transition can mainly be credited to the falling cost of renewables and a global push towards making them more business-conducive. Thus, not just India, but variously, several countries are benefitting from the renewables transition. But the real test of our commitment to combating climate and environmental crisis is revealed by what is being done to the state of the environment and how we are responding to it.

It is here that India has taken several steps backward. Several trends are, at once, visible. The most glaring is the dilution of environmental norms and institutions, which have been a constant refrain throughout the year, and which reveals our ingrained belief that money and institutions are the answer to solving environmental ills, without any behavioral change.

The history of ill-abled institutions like National Clean Energy & Environment Fund, whose ‘unspent’ funds were diverted for Goods and Services Tax compensation, shows that environmental protection cannot be brought about by fattening the coffers of bureaucratic bodies. Yet, while the Government was slammed for diverting unspent funds, no questions were raised about why the funds were lying unspent and whether we require more money for solving environmental problems.

For instance, India did vie for more funding at the climate change negotiations, but the problem is not of insufficient funds but of the fact that we have not prioritised our environmental imperatives. REDD plus is already giving a lot of funding. Similarly, India received $745 million from four multilateral climate funds between 2013 and 2016 — the highest in the world.

Yet, action on climate change at ground level continues to be muddled. Particularly, the year 2017 saw — besides liberal environmental clearances for irrigation and other projects — extensive violations of rules by thermal plants, in terms of sulphur and nitrogen oxide emissions, excessive water consumption and impermissible levels of particulate matter. No progress was made in retrofitting existing power plants to new standards — many of this can be done by amending and relaxing existing rules by the Ministry itself.

Not formulating regulations for industries and power plants, which emit majority of sulphur and nitrogen oxides in the air, has also contributed to air pollution in Delhi, which earned India wide disrepute.

But wasn’t this trajectory to be expectedIJ The prioritisation of institution-building and funding over practice is evident through a stark contrast between India’s leadership role on the global climate talks and its environmental record back home. These outcomes are not due to mere development-environment trade-off — a narrow way of viewing the problem — but of the godhead we have made out of so-called ‘development’.

While, on a positive note, the Modi Government has been trying to overcome such sharp divisions, on a negative note, pervasiveness of development ideal has been overestimated and overplayed. Perhaps, the ideal has a limited utility in unifying the national psyche and overcome existing social divisions, but carrying it too far, too seriously, has started spelling disasters for us.

(The writer is with the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies  and writes for The Resurgent India Trust)