Climate Change and the Energy Challenge: A Pragmatic Approach for India
Climate Change and the Energy Challenge: A Pragmatic Approach for India
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气候变化和能源挑战：印度的务实方法
DOI：
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发表时间：
2009
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
D. Victor
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
V. Rai;D. Victor
印度一直以主张其（以及其他发展中国家）不应在控制导致气候变化的排放方面承担任何费用而闻名。西方造成了这个问题，它应该清理它。这一论点越来越站不住脚--无论是从气候变化的基本算术（没有发展中国家的参与，这个问题是不可能解决的），还是从重要的西方伙伴将越来越多地要求印度和其他发展中国家的政治现实来看。印度自己的公众也要求更多。印度政府已经概述了一个可以做些什么的广泛计划，但该计划仍然缺乏一个战略，以告知哪些努力对温室气体排放最有影响力，哪些最可信，因为它们符合印度自己的利益。本文为这一战略提供了一个框架。它表明，控制温室气体的大量选择都符合印度自身的利益，并且通过三个案例研究表明，未来十年，对排放的影响可能达到每年数亿吨二氧化碳，到2030年，排放量可能会更大。(For相比之下，《京都议定书》每年在全球范围内减少的二氧化碳排放量至多为数亿吨。）我们建议，除了确定自身利益--这是关于气候变化政策“共同利益”的新兴文献中的关键概念--之外，研究印度和局外人（例如，技术提供者和捐助者）具有影响力。迄今为止提出的战略仍然抽象和难以执行的一个原因是，这些战略的基础不是清楚地了解印度政府在哪些方面能够兑现承诺（以及印度公司在哪些方面能够获得所需的技术和做法）。许多想法在理论上是有趣的，但不符合印度的行政和技术能力。在世界其他国家考虑如何与印度就控制排放的任务进行接触之际，印度必须制定反映印度利益、能力和影响力的协议。这些协议并不容易达成，但在其他国际合作领域，如加入世贸组织的协议中，有许多这样的安排先例。
India has been famous for arguing that it (and the rest of the developing world) should incur no expense in controlling emissions that cause climate change. The west caused the problem and it should clean it up. That argument is increasingly untenable — both in the fundamental arithmetic of climate change, which is a problem that is impossible to solve without developing country participation, and in the political reality that important western partners will increasingly demand more of India and other developing countries. India’s own public is also demanding more. The Indian government has outlined a broad plan for what could be done, but the plan still lacks a strategy to inform which efforts offer the most leverage on warming emissions and which are most credible because they align with India’s own interests. This paper offers a framework for that strategy. It suggests that a large number of options to control warming gases are in India’s own self-interest, and with three case studies it suggests that leverage on emissions could amount to several hundred million tonnes of CO2 annually over the next decade and an even larger quantity by 2030. (For comparison, the Kyoto Protocol has caused worldwide emission reductions of, at most, a couple hundred million tonnes of CO2 per year.) We suggest in addition to identifying self-interest — which is the key concept in the burgeoning literature on “co-benefits” of climate change policy — that it is also important to examine where India and outsiders (e.g., technology providers and donors) have leverage. One reason that strategies offered to date have remained abstract and difficult to implement is that they are not rooted in a clear understanding of where the Government of India is able to deliver on its promises (and where Indian firms have access to the needed technology and practices). Many ideas are interesting in theory but do not align with the administrative and technological capabilities of the Indian context. As the rest of the world contemplates how to engage with India on the task of controlling emissions it must craft deals that reflect India’s interests, capabilities and leverage on emissions. These deals will not be simple to craft, but there are many precedents for such arrangements in other areas of international cooperation, such as in accession agreements to the WTO.