India New Climate Statecraft | Council on Foreign Relations

cfr.org · Feb 17, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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India’s climate diplomacy has evolved with those developments, changing from a primarily defensive, equity-centered posture within the UNFCCC into a strategic climate statecraft that operates across multiple fields. India increasingly frames decarbonization as an extension of its economic modernization, energy security, and industrial policy. It selectively engages with COP processes, while separately mobilizing finance, technology, and market access for decarbonization without constraining its economic growth or energy access.That approach to climate diplomacy sharply contrasts the United States’. India selectively champions equity norms, while simultaneously seeking to shape climate outcomes favorable to its development priorities. In contrast, the United States calls for universal mitigation alongside strong energy nationalism and clean-energy industrial competition. The two countries’ differing stances raise broader questions about the future of multilateral climate institutions, the relevance of equity as a climate norm, and leadership in an increasingly geoeconomic climate order.Complicating matters, India faces a strategic juncture defined by three developments, each aggravated under the Trump administration: the aggressive subordination of climate policy to national interests, the linking of decarbonization to industrial policy, and the spillover of the U.S.-China rivalry into climate cooperation. The United States’ forfeit of climate leadership and retreat from mitigation efforts risk further undermining the COP process. As major emitters such as China and the United States increasingly prioritize national climate strategies over multilateral bargains, countries such as India could be expected to shoulder greater mitigation responsibility, even as long-standing questions over finance, equity, and burden-sharing remain unresolved.India’s normative and diplomatic dilemmas can be seen in three interrelated areas: its energy policy; its positions at COPs; and its engagements with climate finance, technology, and trade institutions.India’s Energy PolicyIndia’s energy policy is anchored in coal, but it is increasingly diversifying into natural gas, nuclear, oil, and renewables. This mix is based on a dual-track approach, in which India emphasizes equity, justice, and conditional mitigation timelines, while separately prioritizing economic growth and energy access. India’s continued reliance on coal (still accounting for roughly 70 percent of electricity generation) helps explain its resistance to rigid carbon phase-out timelines.1 At the same time, India’s renewable surge—over 200 GW of installed capacity, roughly a quarter of its electricity generation, sustained annual additions of 20–25 GW, annual clean-energy investment of roughly $40–50 billion USD, expanded grid infrastructure, and a 500-GW renewable target by 2030—bolsters its credibility as a pragmatic climate actor.2These energy practicalities shape India’s climate policy at the COPs and its negotiating positions in finance and technology institutions, calling for fair burden-sharing, predictable finance, and technology support for a just energy transition.India at COPsIn the early 1990s, India proactively shaped the rules, language, and equity principles of the UNFCCC.3 New Delhi’s climate diplomacy was defensive, anchored in developmental sovereignty and distributive justice. It argued that developed countries bear historical responsibility for emissions and should, therefore, undertake binding reductions and provide finance and technology to the Global South. Developing countries, by contrast, were free to reject binding mitigation commitments while grappling with poverty reduction. India consistently invoked the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR), which provided it both legal cover and normative justification to resist mitigation commitments it considered misaligned with its developmental priorities.4The emphasis on equity reflected India’s material constraints, low per-capita emissions, and limited state capacity, as well as its voice in the broader Global South coalition.For example, although initially skeptical of market-based mitigation, India backed the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) at COP-3 in Kyoto once it became clear that it could channel finance and technology without imposing backdoor commitments.5 India helped shape the CDM’s rules and governance structures, and it later delivered significant climate investment into India in the 2000s.6 The Kyoto framework preserved differentiation by requiring developed countries to reduce emissions while exempting developing countries from legally binding mitigation targets.But even as Indian negotiators emphasized equity, New Delhi began shifting toward nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and enhanced transparency.7 Thus, India began drafting ambitious domestic climate initiatives through the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) in 2008.8 Those pro-growth climate measures sought to reduce emissions while supporting development. This was a response to growing international scrutiny of India’s lackluster mitigation efforts after the 2009 Copenhagen COP, as well as a recognition of economic opportunities associated with low-carbon growth.India further recalibrated after the 2015 Paris COP: the incoming Modi government embraced the Paris process and submitted India’s NDCs with specific, time-bound targets to reduce emissions intensity and expand renewable energy.9 India also recognized that transfers of finance and technology from developed countries were unlikely to materialize, and thereafter began tightly integrating climate mitigation with industrial policy, technology upgrading, and growth objectives.Today, New Delhi still invokes equity and CBDR, but does so to negotiate flexibility rather than deflect responsibility.10 Rather than build a defensive equity-based coalition, India has pivoted toward more diversified, opportunistic climate leadership. Initiatives such as the International Solar Alliance and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure demonstrate this new entrepreneurial, market-oriented climate policy.11 The contingent and steady erosion of the differentiated global climate regime has also allowed India to flexibly pursue climate action aligned with domestic priorities without abandoning equity as a normative compass.India in Climate Finance, Technology, and Trade InstitutionsGoverning climate change depends not only on COPs, but on a number of institutional venues covering decarbonization or issues including green finance, technology, and trade. COPs remain the core institutional anchors for adjudicating the political logic of climate action, especially around equity, finance, and technology transfer. But operational discussions on how those levers are mobilized increasingly occur across the Group of Twenty (G20), the BRICS (the bloc of nations including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, as well as Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates), the World Trade Organization (WTO), multilateral development banks (MDBs), plurilateral coalitions, and bilateral partnerships.India’s engagement in such institutions is driven by several factors. Most climate-finance deliberations happen outside the UNFCCC, making MDB capitalization, lending reform, and debt-relief frameworks central for predictable, concessional lending. Through its G20 presidency in 2023, India pushed the “better, bigger, more effective MDBs” agenda, arguing that MDBs need to address global challenges such as climate and pandemics in addition to, not instead of, development and poverty reduction.12 The New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration and MDB Evolution Roadmap called for more climate and Sustainable Development Goals financing while protecting development mandates, country ownership, and policy space.13Indian officials also argued that climate finance needs to be embedded in growth and infrastructure lending to support climate adaptation and initiatives such as grids, urban resilience, and transport. Through the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank, India has supported financing for renewable energy, sustainable infrastructure, and local-currency lending.14 The underlying logic is to marry climate action with international financial reform; such Global South–led MDBs could expand affordable climate financing and provide alternatives to more conditional or restrictive financing from developed countries.Further, the spread of green industrial policies such as the Common Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) has prompted diplomatic backlash from India, which sees such trade tools as coercive. New Delhi frames CBAMs as green protectionism that shifts costs onto developing countries, contravening CBDR and constraining national policy space.15 At the WTO, BRICS, and Group of Seventy-Seven (G77), India advocates for decarbonization facilitated through concessional finance, technology transfer, and predictable public funding, rather than unilateral border measures. Finally, rule-making on climate-finance standards now occurs at technical venues. India has used those discussions to reframe climate-finance debates in favor of developing countries. At the G20 finance track, India has promoted language on “accelerated, adequate and additional” climate finance to ensure climate spending does not displace development lending.16 Through its role in the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System, the Reserve Bank of India has supported integrating climate-risk work with the broader push for scaled-up MDB climate finance.17 And through the Coalition for Disaster Relief Infrastructure, India has encouraged MDBs to prioritize resilience-oriented infrastructure, arguing that climate action should extend beyond mitigation.18India and the United States: Convergence, Competition, and Climate Dip