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.

Climate is a global common, and the task of reversing the worsening climate change is a global responsibility. There are two aspects to climate action: adaptation and mitigation. This paper focuses on mitigation, the global efforts for which are uneven as some countries are performing better than others.

The fragility of the Himalayan ecosystem was recently highlighted by incidents of land sinking in Joshimath, a small hill town in India’s Uttarakhand.

Waste-to-energy projects in India have historically been city-centric. As cities are well-served by LPG and CNG distribution systems, the Bio-CNG produced has to be used for either fuelling urban public transport, or moved to rural areas at considerable cost.

Rapid population growth and the expansion of metropolitan regions are defining features of India’s economic growth story. The number of Indian cities with populations above one million increased from 23 in 1991 to 53 in 2011.

Gender inequality is a major cause and effect of hunger and poverty, with women and girls comprising 60 percent of the global hungry.

India is among the countries in the world that are most vulnerable to the consequences of global warming. While there are notable efforts for both mitigation and adaptation, these have failed to consider issues of gender equity even as evidence shows that women and girls bear the disproportionate burden of climate change.

The 2021 Conference of Parties 26 (COP26) propelled nations to ramp up their climate targets and the concomitant Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. However, the updated NDCs and the announced pledges for 2030 remain insufficient and poorly aligned with the targets of the Paris Agreement.

Although Africa’s greenhouse gas emissions are low, its contribution to climate change mitigation is critical to global climate action.

Air pollution is a global environmental threat, and a cause of significant proportions of diseases and premature deaths. The threat is massive in India, which continuously fails to meet World Health Organization (WHO) standards and is home to 21 of the 30 most polluted cities of the world.