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Low-Carbon Development: An Idea Whose Time Has Come—Unlocking Climate Cooperation Between India and the EU

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EU-India Relations

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Abstract

This chapter deals with the bilateral climate relations emerging in the context of the EU-India Strategic Partnership. As will be argued here, climate policy as a more recent policy field offers specific opportunities and incentives for Indian-European bilateral cooperation. This includes economic win-win potential in the field of green technologies and joint interest in dealing with global warming and climate change impacts. The concept of low-carbon development in India has now arrived, and gradually the conditions for enhanced cooperation on climate mitigation have improved. India’s climate policy paradigm has shifted, and the firewall, which had for a long time stood in the way of climate mitigation policies, has been breached. The co-benefits of climate mitigation have gained a foothold and have since 2008 been institutionalised in transformative policy frameworks structured towards low-carbon development. The EU, for her part, has offered structural collaboration, which fits into India’s low-carbon approach to renewable energy, and energy efficiency in infrastructure development. An opportunity structure enabling the collaboration between the supranational EU and India’s federal state is the emergence of multi-level governance with interconnected institutions and involving public and private actors working at different governmental levels in climate relations and in various low-carbon projects.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Regarding India’s climate diplomacy towards the EU see Jayaram’s contribution in this volume.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Freie Universität of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Kirsten Jörgensen

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  1. Kirsten Jörgensen
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Correspondence to Kirsten Jörgensen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Political Science and Sociology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Philipp Gieg

  2. Institute of Political Science and Sociology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Timo Lowinger

  3. Institute of Political Science and Sociology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Manuel Pietzko

  4. Institute of Political Science and Sociology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Anja Zürn

  5. Centre for European Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

    Ummu Salma Bava

  6. Institute of Political Science and Sociology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Gisela Müller-Brandeck-Bocquet

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Jörgensen, K. (2021). Low-Carbon Development: An Idea Whose Time Has Come—Unlocking Climate Cooperation Between India and the EU. In: Gieg, P., Lowinger, T., Pietzko, M., Zürn, A., Bava, U.S., Müller-Brandeck-Bocquet, G. (eds) EU-India Relations. Contributions to International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65044-5_9

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