How will India measure, report and verify its climate change actions when it is not yet sure of what actions it needs to take or the economic consequences of such moves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? This question is bound to hot up in the domestic arena as well as international climate talks over the year.
Climate change negotiations have slipped off the radar after the Copenhagen meet but the series of negotiations held over the past five months have revealed that the stakes remain as high and India cannot afford to be lax.
Increasingly, it is clear that the developed world wants to straight-jacket India and China into an international reporting regime. Just as they are required to report their climate change actions, they expect developing countries to follow suit. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change does not mandate it but the Copenhagen Accord has opened a window for such a move.
At recent talks, countries like US and Europe have pushed to evolve rules and regulations to monitor Indian action on climate change even as they dither on their own responsibilities of increasing emission reduction targets and providing financial and technical compensation to poor and developing countries.
India could be caught in a bind. While it has declared a voluntary target for cuts in emission intensity by 20-25% by 2020, it does not have a blueprint. The Low Carbon Growth committee set up under Kirit Parikh to inform the government on this goal is running slow.
Independent studies have begun to warn that India could be leading itself into a trap if it doesn't evaluate its options well in advance.
A recent 6-sector study by the Centre for Science and Environment warns that the 20-25% target might be easily achievable by 2020 but getting locked into an ever-reducing emission trajectory any further might burden the Indian economy.
Worse still, it warned that the restraint in moving towards a low-carbon economy may not just come from increased price of energy but also from the demand the economy will put on water and land resources.
The developed countries want emerging economies such as India to put hard figures on the table and present a strict regime to monitor. They would be more than happy to have a WTO-like regime in place outside the ambit of UN. As of now, India, in its latest submission to UN, has guarded against such a move.
But the talks are going to ratchet a level higher in June when formal confabulations take place at UN.
A Copenhagen style ambush of developing countries could be in the works again.
