This brief highlights the importance of climate diplomacy in Indian foreign policy, and the country’s role in the North-South politics of climate negotiations as a leading member of the Global South that includes Africa. It focuses on two India-led multi-stakeholder global partnership organisations—i.e., the International Solar Alliance (ISA) and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI)—both of which are working to combat the two regions’ shared misfortunes of disproportionate vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. It explores possible ways
This brief highlights the importance of climate diplomacy in Indian foreign policy, and the country’s role in the North-South politics of climate negotiations as a leading member of the Global South that includes Africa. It focuses on two India-led multi-stakeholder global partnership organisations—i.e., the International Solar Alliance (ISA) and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI)—both of which are working to combat the two regions’ shared misfortunes of disproportionate vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. It explores possible ways by which India and Africa can strengthen their climate cooperation towards ensuring sustainable livelihoods for their 2.84 billion people.
India and Africa are two regions that bear a disproportionate impact of climate change, even as their per-capita emissions of greenhouse gases are lower than global average and they are responsible for only a small share of the current stock of emissions. The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that India—home to 20% of the world’s population—could face multiple climate change-induced disasters in the next two decades. In the African continent, meanwhile, eight countries are among the ten most vulnerable in the world.
Yet, climate is a global common, and therefore the mitigation of climate change is a global public good. This shared responsibility to combat global warming continues to shape international climate change diplomacy, paving the way for agreements that seek mitigation and adaptation measures, and the appropriate financing. Indeed, the evolution of climate diplomacy has been a logical consequence of long-lasting concerns about nature and human survival that have preceded the construction of the current climate action regime.
In recent years, new networks and approaches to establishing a global conversation on the consequences of, and solutions to climate change, have emerged. These include the birth of multi-stakeholder global partnerships such as the International Solar Alliance (ISA) and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), which will be highlighted in this brief.
The paper can be accessed by clicking here
https://www.orfonline.org/research/india-and-africa-leverage-climate-diplomacy/
This paper has been authored by Oluwaseun J Oguntuase from ORF.
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