The West thinks it has been doing too much for the climate. The poor nations aren’t moved. The new leader of the West, Trump, rejects pious posturing; he operates like a sharp trader. How does India intend to negotiate with him? With the shifting tides of geopolitics, the art of dignified complaining at multilateral forums may soon become obsolete, as the first principles of the climate treaty face likely dismissal. Conventional arguments must now yield to market-driven pragmatism, as the shrinking space for moral appeals in climate discourse is further eclipsed by the transactional priorities of the incoming American administration.
The story of climate crisis negotiations is, above all, a testament to the power of the first-mover advantage — an advantage that has perpetuated itself across nations and within their borders. Between 1751 and 2017, wealthy nations consumed more than 65% of the planet’s shared carbon budget, leaving behind a staggering ecological deficit. While their citizens suffered through the smog of industrial revolutions, they secured an affluent future for generations to come. Now, as former colonies with vast, impoverished populations seek their own ascent — pollution an unavoidable byproduct — the carbon space they need to manoeuvre has all but vanished.
The Global South — represented by India, the African Union, China, and other emerging economies — contends that the West bears an “emissions debt”, a moral and historical obligation to provide not just funds for mitigation efforts but also compensation for past damages and resources for adaptation to the escalating impacts of the climate crisis. This tension forms the crux of the deep fault line dividing wealthy and developing nations in negotiations at multilateral forums.
Trump’s looming presidency has left climate advocates in the West deeply anxious. Flooding in the US East Coast and Canada, coupled with forest fires in Australia, intermittently delivers the Third World experience to the First World. Yet the disquieting reality is that climate action by prior administrations has been disappointingly thin. The recent COP29 negotiations in November were, to put it politely, acrimonious. The $300 billion in annual climate finance —framed as a mix of grants and low-interest loans from developed nations — was hailed by the US as a “historic outcome,” while India dismissed it as an “optical illusion”.
These negotiations continue to focus heavily on clamping down on the fossil fuel industry — a strategy advocated by environmental activists but one that remains unattainable for emerging economies caught in their developmental cycle. Even Germany had to restart its coal plants when LNG shipments were disrupted during the Ukraine crisis, because, as it turns out, certain lifestyles remain non-negotiable for the West.
In 2021, the average North American emitted 11 times more energy-related CO2 than the average African. As one African leader remarked, “Let us carbonise first (to decarbonise).” India, whose energy consumption is one-third of the global average, faces a similar conundrum. Its energy portfolio is poised for a dramatic transformation, driven not only by internal growth but also by a global economic realignment toward cost-efficient infrastructure and labour. This shift, underscored by the proliferation of global capability centres within its borders, demands substantial energy resources.
Emerging economies, for their part, have approached climate issues with less urgency than the crisis demands. This is largely because floods don’t wash away their elites, nor do heatwaves claim them as victims. Air purifiers and air conditioners ensure that the privileged remain cocooned in productivity, while the poor bear the brunt of both historical injustices and governmental inefficiencies. The rich migrate to cleaner skies when the air quality index surges to a choking 1,000. In this sense, India’s elites wield similar climate choices as their counterparts in the West, navigating the crisis on their own terms while leaving the rest to contend with its harshest consequences.
The International Energy Agency’s data tells a nuanced story: The richest 0.1% of the world’s population emitted 10 times more than all the rest of the richest 10% combined. While the top 10% of emitters span all continents, 85% of them live in advanced economies, China, the Middle East, Russia, and South Africa. The bottom 10% of emitters globally reside in developing economies across Africa and Asia.
Arguing about moral debt with Trump is akin to trying to fill a sieve. In any case, given Trump’s well-documented disdain for multilateral institutions, there’s a strong likelihood he will disengage entirely — a move that could upend the global agenda, particularly since the US remains the principal financier of these bodies. It is a misreading of Trump as anti-green and pro-fossil fuel — he is only relentlessly transactional. For India, this presents an opportunity.
Trump will almost certainly push India to buy more US oil — a trade that began in 2017 — as a means of addressing the bilateral trade deficit. In return, India could craft its own wish list, prioritising greater access to climate-related technologies. At the core of India’s climate challenges are intellectual property barriers that hinder its ability to clean up its energy systems. Expanding the scope of the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET) to include a pillar on climate technology could be a pivotal step. Joint research and development with the 17 national laboratories under the US Department of Energy could also yield transformative outcomes. To capitalise on these opportunities, India must establish a fast-track mechanism to resolve climate technology IP issues with urgency, ensuring that this transactional diplomacy delivers tangible results and inspires investor confidence.
At COP29 in Baku, India argued that transitions in developing nations should not be reduced to mere investment opportunities. Yet, this stance may be counter-intuitive in the current context of American politics. For Trump, it is the sheer scale of India’s market that will dictate economic logic. If change is to be brokered, it will be on the terms of markets, not morality.
Shreerupa Mitra writes on energy, geopolitics and multilateralismThe views expressed are personal
