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his book consists essays by some of the world’s best minds on international relations and strategic affairs. The constant theme throughout this volume has been to highlight the fact that as the world comes to terms with a rising India Indians must in turn learn to shoulder the burdens that come with being an important power. Gone are the days when Indian policy makers found it difficult psychologically to bring new situations into perspective missing thereby historic opportunities for positive formulations in world politics on many focal questions. Gone are also the days when Indians were forced to find virtues in being passive negative and peripheral. Today’s imperatives are different. Therefore India’s biggest foreign policy challenge now lies in changing the old mindsets of the Indians that their country can remain a bystander to the actions of other powers. The choices India makes today have the potential to change outcomes on almost all global issues. The end of the Cold War has liberated India to simultaneously deepen it relations with all the major power centres. India can no longer remain bound by the Cold War paradigm where good relations with one power automatically entailed negative consequences with its rivals. Contributors to this volume have examined in details how the old strategic thinking and foreign policy vision in India were sustained strengthening in the process the causes of India’s rivals and foes. They have also discussed how this old mindset could and must change so that India along with its friends and partners could excel in the global power structure. Their well researched and dispassionately analyzed essays are intended to contribute significantly to the debate on critical aspects of India’s geopolitics as the country celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of its independence this year.

In an ironic and to most Indians quite disturbing turn, India is increasingly portrayed as an obstructionist in the global climate negotiations. How did a country likely to be on the frontline of climate impacts – with a vast proportion of the world’s poor and a reasonably good record of energy-related environmental policy and performance – reach this diplomatic cul de sac? Part of the answer lies in the posturing of climate diplomats from India and industrialized countries. But looking beyond the cut and thrust of climate diplomacy, Indian climate policy and the reaction to it are a salutary case study in the failure to build North-South trust in the climate negotiations.

A top-down approach – with internationally specified and binding national targets and timetables – has long been the preferred position of environmental advocates. But bottom-up approaches, such as policy measures to be devised on a country-by-country basis, have also been part of the policy grammar of the climate negotiations. For those who put climate change mitigation first (as opposed to those who seek to preserve sovereignty, or emphasize untrammeled economic growth), a focus on targets and timetables is an article of faith. This article suggests that focusing in the short run on explicit caps (or the implicit caps of climate plans) for developing countries is a misguided policy. It will not produce predictability of future emissions from current baselines, and in the short to medium term may be misguided for environmental reasons. Top-down approaches risk creating counterproductive incentives, such as incentives to set overly high emissions targets or to avoid early action. They may, in practice reduce, rather than increase, the predictability of emissions levels and of emissions reductions against BAU baselines or meaningful targets. The paper argues that strengthening domestic institutions in developing countries is needed for successful low-carbon development.

Summary of the book

As frustration mounts in some quarters at the perceived inadequacy or speed of international action on climate change, and as the likelihood of significant impacts grows, the focus is increasingly turning to liability for climate change damage. Actual or potential climate change liability implicates a growing range of actors, including governments, industry, businesses, non-governmental organisations, individuals and legal practitioners. Climate Change Liability provides an objective, rigorous and accessible overview of the existing law and the direction it might take in seventeen developed and developing countries and the European Union. In some jurisdictions, the applicable law is less developed and less the subject of current debate. In others, actions for various kinds of climate change liability have already been brought, including high profile cases such as Massachusetts v. EPA in the United States. Each chapter explores the potential for and barriers to climate change liability in private and public law.