The Mystery Ministry for Climate (in)action in India

Can anyone tell me today where does the buck stop on climate related decisions in the Indian Administration?

While there are 53 ministries and a total of 93 departments in India, it is not uncommon for their interests to intersect, even clash at times and when the subject in discussion is as broad as the entire environment then it becomes just as much difficult. Should it be the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change? It has Climate Change right in the name you would say but then might I remind you of the Ministry of Agriculture or can any decarbonization happen without involving the Ministry of Petroleum and then also what what about Ministry of Renewable Energy? What about Finance, Rural Development, Education, Labor Welfare. What about Water?

This is exactly the of rigmarole of institutional tripwires India's climate inaction is currently stuck in.

A relevant example of this, which might be applicable worldwide was pointed out at the CEO-Minister Roundtable on biofuels at the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM-18) deliberations in Goa which along with secretaries from various member states, serendipitously, also had me present in the audience. One of the points that majorly resonated with speakers and audiences alike- was the number of ministries involved in moving anything to do with Biofuels.

Let’s take India’s example, I only recently found out that Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, which so far not only seemed to be driving everything on Bio-ethanol production but also is now pushing hard and rightly so for the production of Compressed Bio Gas in India, is only in charge of its offtake. No matter the thousands of crores of grants given to the PSUs under the stewardship of MoP&NG to produce second generation ethanol for the first time in the country, they are still not in charge of it. Well, who is then? - someone rightly asked at the CEM panel.

Looking at it again one would think ministry of new and renewable energy might be a good bet, for biofuels are certainly a new and renewable form of energy, but I am yet to see MNRE’s symbol on anything ethanol. In fact, the CEM panel was chaired from the India side by the Secretary from Department of Science and Technology, another important stakeholder in this long list of holders of a common stake.

?So then what happens to biofuels? Who decides the first 2-G ethanol plant would run on Rice straw or sugarcane bagasse, we have someone looking at the commercial angle, but who is looking at feedstock supply? Who is painting the bigger picture, who’s neck will the albatross hang in case there is a failure?

These pertinent questions can be true for anything that isn’t traditional- and by traditional, I mean subjects that have not been around for 5 decades and have now devised a clear division of responsibilities within the different departments of the governments.

Environment and climate change are sadly not one of those subjects. The word environment literally means everything that surrounds us, now imagine the policy paralysis such a subject would create in the structure I have described above.

We have a ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and I as a student of environment grew up to think that, this is where I want to reach to make a difference on the climate impact of India. But only recently India launched its carbon credit program and it turned out that MoEFCC has a minimum to no role to play in it, this is tragic since most carbon credits that India needs are not just based out of renewable energy but also forestation, agriculture and other nature-based activities.

The even more surprising thing is that Nationally Designated Authority for the Paris Agreement that will look after the international carbon trading India would do, is under the MoEFCC’s mandate and you know what? What is still more surprising that as soon as the Indian CCTS was launched, MoEFCC also took out a parallel scheme providing something called “green credits” for all the same subjects one can get a carbon credit for (which is actually even allowed in this system). This would be a voluntary scheme operating parallelly to the Indian CCTS which would be both voluntary and compliance based.

Confused yet?

Now if this doesn’t scream the fact that both MoP and MoEFCC should sit in a room, talk it out- get professional help if they need to but to stop bungling India’s unborn carbon markets then I don’t know what does!

What in fact is the role of MoEFCC except taking stock of India’s forest and natural resources and maybe where it is most effective is through the Pollution Control Boards which is the stuff of nightmares for any industrialist and yet its efficacy in controlling pollution whether it be land, water or air is questionable at best.

This topic was discussed at length even in the Energy Transition Advisory Committee (ETAC) which was chaired by Mr Tarun Kapoor, Advisor to the PM and had the likes of Mr Subhash Kumar (ex CMD ONGC) spearheading it. The chapter dedicated to this central policy problem in all things government and environment, needs to be closely studied by our policy makers.

I understand now that we cannot and probably should not have one super ministry in charge of all environmental action in the country. There would have to be water department looking after water, forest department, energy department and even countless sub departments with their own nuanced myopic area of expertise. But that doesn’t mean we can let go of the larger picture- someone does need to be at the helm of this sinking ship- with every decimal increase in temperature, thousands are added to the list of damned- something we simply can’t afford to.

The climate crisis is a security crisis from all points of view whether it be refugees, food security, threat of floods and cyclones or simply pollution and the solution interestingly also comes out of how India deals with its “actual” security issue. The cabinet committee on National Security faces the same amount of problems as I have listed above- there are simply too many variables and too many ministries involved. But since the matter is delicate, there has been an easy and so far quite a robust solution of forming a high level committee including the Prime Minister, Defence Minister, Home Minister and Finance Minister along with other senior officers of the government.

This platform is where the buck stops on national security where all departments intersect and form consensus on how they wish to proceed to their common goal- how the Home Ministry and Defence Ministry don’t both end up pitting their forces against each other instead of helping out the general population.

My recommendation is that’s what we need for India- a high level cabinet committee on battling climate change, it should have the Prime Minister and it should host all these ministries including finance and Oil & Gas and others to come together and see the bigger picture, to coordinate among themselves what they plan to do, to not have policies neutralizing each other but supplementing each other and all within a national level umbrella goal of making India Net Zero by 2070.

?Only with such a bird’s eye view of India’s climate policy and its implementation will the deficits currently so immensely noticeable with the bungled authorities of various intersecting Ministries will be filled and India would get the right kind of policy infrastructure to even have a fighting chance against the slaughter climate change is going to wreak on her in the not-so-distant future.