Archives: Journal Articles

Low cost and low quality electricity for agriculture contributes to erosion of electricity distribution systems and encourages wasteful consumption, even as farmers are increasingly deprived of adequate and good quality power. While past efforts to solve this problem have focused on technocratic approaches, this paper attempts to articulate a political interpretation of the electricity-groundwater conundrum. The paper argues that farmers are quite rational in their current decision-making given the problematic context within which they make choices. It outlines a more explicitly political approach to the problem, based on state level bargains between stakeholders and a multifaceted approach to implementing bargains.

Low cost and low quality electricity for agriculture contributes to erosion of electricity distribution systems and encourages wasteful consumption, even as farmers are increasingly deprived of adequate and good quality power. While past efforts to solve this problem have focused on technocratic approaches, this paper attempts to articulate a political interpretation of the electricity-groundwater conundrum. The paper argues that farmers are quite rational in their current decision-making given the problematic context within which they make choices. It outlines a more explicitly political approach to the problem, based on state level bargains between stakeholders and a multifaceted approach to implementing bargains.

The expansion of renewable energy (RE) within India’s electricity system is not a technical question alone. It is also an inherently political struggle between powerful incumbents and disruptive challengers, with destabilising consequences for existing institutional forms and power structures. The existing system is held in place by a supporting configuration of technology, politics and institutions. If RE is to substantially displace fossil fuels, the existing configuration will have to give way to a new such configuration that supports RE. This article explains the existing political and institutional underpinnings of the current electricity system, and discusses the forces that hold them in place and what it will take to shake these loose.
In doing so, it seeks to make two points to two discrete audiences. First, to electricity and energy practitioners, it suggests that looking at the spread of RE only through a technical lens is highly incomplete; the likelihood, speed and impact of RE will be determined by political and institutional factors as well. Second, to broader analysts of India’s economy and politics, it suggests that disruptions in Indian energy are highly likely to also imply disruptive politics and economics; any story of Indian political economy in the coming decade is incomplete without an exploration of shifts driven by changes in electricity politics.

The ongoing UN negotiations for a 2015 climate agreement have yet to resolve two fundamental legal issues on which its effectiveness will hinge. The first is the precise legal form this agreement will take. Parties had agreed to work towards a ‘protocol, another legal instrument or an agreedoutcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties’. This leaves scope for a range of possible legal forms, only some of which are legally binding. Second, they have yet to determine the legal nature of the ‘nationally determined contributions’ submitted by Parties. This article addresses these two critical issues: on ‘legal form’, it identifies the instruments that could form part of the Paris package, focussing on their legal status, significance and influence; and on the ‘legal nature’ of nationally determined contributions, it considers their nature and scope, the range of options for ‘housing’ these contributions as well as their relationship to the core 2015 agreement.

Suggested Citation: Lavanya Rajamani, The Devilish Details: Key Legal Issues in the 2015 Climate Negotiations’ (2015) 78(5) Modern Law Review 826–853

This article explores first, why a legally binding instrument is unlikely to emerge from the UN conference on climate change at Copenhagen, and next, whether it matters and if so, why. In the process, it examines the terms “politically binding”, and “legally binding”, and explores the space between and within politically and legally binding agreements. It also discusses the form and shape that a political deal could take at Copenhagen, and the influence it could have in the development of a future climate regime.

Election 2004 revealed no clear mandates because no political formation currently has the capacity to break the ‘logjam of electoral strategy’. In other words, while political parties may appeal on the basis of caste mobilisation or an ‘anxious’ nationalism, such ideological appeals are necessarily limited by their appeal only to sections of the populace. On the other hand, parties are also unable to move beyond the governance agenda or a general politics of redistribution as the state’s ability to sustain populism is also limited. Thus, in place of any viable form of electoral mobilisation, parties fight elections via the formation of contingent coalitions. As this article argues, such a politics, while limited, has also strengthened Indian democracy. It has allowed diverse constituencies to share power and also produced political volatility without a corresponding ideological or policy volatility.

Arvind Subramanian’s recent book, Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance, has renewed interest in measuring the potential of emerging powers. Subramanian argues that projections of gross domestic product (GDP), trade and creditor status make China’s future dominance inevitable.

The focus, however, on a narrow metric like GDP growth rate to anticipate the dominant powers of tomorrow is flawed. For one, the GDP figure tells us little about the quality of a nation’s economy or whether its wealth is being converted into competitive capabilities. For example, China’s $5 trillion GDP, second-biggest globally, hides more than it reveals. Nearly half of China’s GDP is driven by investment, mainly in real estate and infrastructure. It is unclear whether this build of fixed-asset investment is producing capabilities or knowledge that great powers typically possess. The other major driver of China’s economy is its role as a manufacturing hub. What is less known is that foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) account for 60 per cent of China’s trade and 80 per cent of the value of their exports is imported. In other words, the value addition that occurs in China itself is a tiny contribution in the overall production process. Even China’s creditor status is circumscribed by the fact that China’s reserve assets are denominated in currencies printed by its principal debtors who have, consequently, transferred the vulnerability of this imbalance onto China

The last few years have witnessed a flurry of diplomatic activity on climate change. In addition to the scheduled inter-governmental negotiations under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),1 further meetings, many at a Ministerial level, have been convened by the G-8, the Major Economies Forum, the UN Secretary General, as well as Denmark and Mexico who served as hosts to the fifteenth and sixteenth Conferences of Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC. These led to outcomes at COP-15 held at Copenhagen, 7–18 December 2009, and COP-16 held at Cancun, 29 November to 10 December 2010.

5(2) Carbon and Climate Law Review 136 – 146 (August 2011)

This article traces the evolution of international environmental law and dialogue in the four decades from Stockholm, 1972, to Rio+20, 2012, with a focus on the changing dynamics of the discourse between developed and developing countries, and the corresponding interpretational shifts in the application of differential treatment in international environmental law—climate change law in particular. This article argues that in the first three decades of environmental diplomacy, from 1972 to 2002, the international community witnessed an exponential growth in the number and range of multilateral environmental agreements, an array of tools, techniques and practices, and a rapid expansion of differential treatment in favour of developing countries. Differential treatment in central obligations, albeit disputed from its inception, found pride of place in the Kyoto Protocol negotiated in 1997. The decade that followed, 2002 to 2012, witnessed heightened popular and political mobilization around the climate change issue. But, in response to seemingly intractable difficulties across the North–South and North–North spectrum, it was accompanied by a retreat from differential treatment in central obligations. The battle over the future (or lack thereof) of the Kyoto Protocol, and the recent developments in the climate regime—in particular the 2011 Durban Platform Decision—testify to this retreat from certain variants of differential treatment, and interpretations of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities. An analysis of these developments and the politics that gave rise to them, reveal that while the international regime can survive the erosion of certain limited forms of differential treatment, a wholesale rejection of differential treatment, and of the ‘equity’ concerns that animate it, would destabilize the normative core of the regime as well as render the climate regime unattractive to key players like India.

Concerns over a two-front military threat from China and Pakistan in the early 2000s led India to develop a strategy based on deterrence and dissuasion to prevent any loss of territory. The military was never resourced accordingly, however, leaving open serious vulnerabilities. Despite recent improvements in India-China and India-Pakistan relations, the two-front military threat remains a formidable challenge with no easy answers. India does not have the economic wherewithal to resource its military to fight a two-front war. The alternative—seeking partnerships with other powers to externally rebalance—will also prove difficult, given that the Quad initiative is still in its early stages and cannot provide reliable protection as of now. The smartest choice for New Delhi, therefore, is to neither fight nor prepare to fight a two-front war. Instead, India should seek durable and enduring peace with one of its adversaries. Since China remains a long-term strategic competitor and permanent peace with Pakistan is at odds with the dominant political ideology in New Delhi, however, the Indian military is likely to remain in an unviable position: resource-constrained, overstretched, and vulnerable.