Last month, China’s special envoy for climate change, Liu Zhenmin, and his delegation visited India, where they attended two important meetings on climate policy and renewable energy, suggesting that the thaw in bilateral relations between the two countries is creating opportunities for cooperation on climate policy, experts said.
Liu Zhenmin met with Sippy George, Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs (West) and exchanged views on the global climate agenda and Santosh Sarangi, Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. Researchers at the Center for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) said these connections indicate that after a period of limited diplomacy, relations between India and China are opening avenues for cooperation on climate and clean energy.
India and China have historically shaped global climate outcomes through aligned positions as the most important countries in the Global South. They have specifically coordinated around the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) and equality in climate negotiations in the past.
“Framing an Indochina Climate and Clean Energy Strategy,” a policy paper by Pooja Vijay Ramamurthy and Shruti Gargade at the CSEP conference, which will be released on Monday, argues that this engagement must be grounded in today’s geopolitical realities.
This paper maps out historical bilateral and multilateral engagement with China, presents lessons from the past, and outlines engagement for the future.
Issues, including energy efficiency, sustainable agriculture, waste management, urban resilience and sustainable food systems, are more likely to see collaboration because these are “low policy” areas, the paper said.
More complex areas involving technology, knowledge and financial flows include strategically sensitive sectors, such as electric vehicles, batteries, and solar and wind components. However, these areas are key to enabling India’s energy transition and will require the establishment of more nuanced regulatory and financial frameworks between actors from both countries, CSEP said.
“It is also necessary to strengthen alignment beyond the bilateral level through smaller groups such as BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and multilateral development banks such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the New Development Bank (NDB), to develop common rules and standards on climate finance, climate resilience, green taxonomies and to demonstrate climate leadership in the Global South.”
The paper’s authors combined historical mapping, document analysis, expert interviews, and policy workshops for their recommendations. They also created an original dataset of 44 official bilateral engagements between the Indian and Chinese governments from 1993 to 2020, sourced from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
They focused on three main phases of climate and energy engagement between China and India. Between the 1990s and 2007, this partnership was characterized by strong multilateral alignment and emerging bilateral cooperation. India and China have closely coordinated in global climate negotiations on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and equality in development, with a bilateral focus on environmental protection, minerals, renewable energy, etc. From 2008 to 2015, there was more participation. Climate and energy cooperation has expanded rapidly through memorandums of understanding, strategic economic dialogues, joint research initiatives, and subnational sister city agreements, according to the paper. But in the third phase (2016-2026), the period was a period of decline and collapse. “Geopolitical shocks, including Doklam, Covid-19, and the Galwan clashes, severely reduced engagement. Structural asymmetries widened as China strengthened its dominance in green supply chains, while India’s bilateral trade deficit, including in green goods, deepened,” the report said.
The Center also recommended joint research, sister-city partnerships and sub-national exchanges on air quality, urban resilience and sustainable mobility, which would strengthen confidence and generate practical policy insights at the local level.
“India and China have built multi-faceted climate cooperation for more than three decades. Today’s economic and geopolitical realities require rebuilding on those foundations. However, we must think differently about how to do this and in which sectors are low-risk and high-potential,” Gargade said.
