Global climate policy and local energy politics: is India hiding behind the poor?

Abstract

Along with the large middle income countries Brazil, China and South Africa, India has been put under increasing pressure to shoulder parts of the mitigation burden and commit to national emission reduction targets. India, however, refers to its limited capacity and wide-spread energy poverty. Is India hiding behind its poor? While others examined the distribution of emissions within the country to answer this question, we study domestic policy making at the examples of energy subsidies and access to clean energy. Evidence from a combination of interviews and secondary sources suggests that domestic policy making is not generally inconsistent with the pro-poor arguments advanced at the international level. Given their large number and the country's democratic system, the poor do have some weight in Indian politics. However, inconsistencies can be identified within India's international discourse that simultaneously tries to project an image of a strong emerging economy, and of a poor developing country in need of special treatment. We show that this branding strategy is problematic both for the progress of international climate negotiations and for India's poor.

Experiences with the Mass Distribution of LPG Stoves in Rural Communities of Ghana

“…For example, subsidized LPG may be used for fueling vehicles, rather than for cooking purposes (Lucon et al 2004;Pandey and Morris 2006). Moreover, a universal price subsidy for LPG could generally be regressive, and highly so in low-and lower-middle-income countries (Edjekumhene et al 2007, Kojima 2011Polsky and Ly 2012;Jaeger and Michaelowa 2014). These concerns point to the potential role of a means-tested LPG subsidy as a mechanism for overcoming the financial barrier to the use of LPG.…”

Powering and puzzling: climate change adaptation policies in Bangladesh and India

“…The unprecedented monsoon flooding of 2017 and subsequent deaths of largely poor and rural people (Safi 2017) are tragic examples of adaptation policy that failed to adequately puzzle over the social and political causes of climate vulnerability (Taylor 2015;O'Keefe et al 1976;Watts 1983;Watts and Bohle 1993). India's increasing importance in international-scale climate negotiations already includes political discourses around vulnerability that are pro-poor (Jaeger and Michaelowa 2016;Chakravarty and Ramana 2012). Working towards climate justice within India necessitates puzzling over adaptation at the national and sub-national scales that include clearly articulated pro-poor schemes (Dubash 2012) to improve access to entitlements and processes that enshrine empowerment for vulnerable populations.…”

“…Climate change adaptation is an increasingly politicized and contested policy topic in countries such as Bangladesh and India (Jaeger and Michaelowa 2016;Nightingale 2017;Sovacool 2018). Specifically, the framing of problems and adaptation solutions is among the most contested aspects of climate change policymaking (Vij et al 2018;Rashid 2011;Ribot 2014).…”

A Review of the Environmental Policy Literature from 2014 to 2017 with a Closer Look at the Energy Justice Field

“…The authors note the general lack of literature on the linkages between energy governance and low‐income communities, and they issue a call to scholars and practitioners to include a “poverty dimension into mainstream analyses of energy governance at various levels” (Bazilian et al, , p. 223). Another exception is an article by Jaeger and Michaelowa () that evaluates the political influence of poor communities in India in determining energy subsidies and access to clean energy policy decisions. The authors find that India’s politicians accommodate low‐income individuals when it could result in an electoral victory; however, they also find that the political power of the poor is limited due to regressive energy subsidies and slow progress of connecting households to the electricity grid (Jaeger & Michaelowa, ).…”