The politics of climate change: Does India need a 'Green party'?

India, the world's largest democracy, is experiencing some of the worst impacts of climate change. Yet 'climate change' is not really an election issue. Can a 'green party' change that?

It’s election season in India. The year that has led up to these elections feels like a curated movie of some of the worst impacts of climate change. The last year had devastating floods in Delhi, severe heatwaves across the country, multiple land slides in the Himalayan region, and Bangalore seeing an acute water shortage. I would probably be right to say every voting citizen of the country - be it the savvy start-up founders in Bangalore who had to be rescued from their villas in boats or farmers toiling under the sun in rural Bihar - has experienced first hand some impact of climate change in the last year itself. Why just the voters, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari collapsed at a rally in Maharashtra and blamed it on the heat.

While ‘Sustainable bharat’ and ‘Environment’ have made their way into election manifestos of national parties, they haven’t taken up much talk time in campaigning

However ‘climate change’ itself hardly features in any political debates. In comparison, a lot of western societies see intense political debates on climate change. Many of them have ‘green parties’ that stand for environmentalism. India has never had one, or at least one that people have heard of. In this piece, I explore if that needs to change and whether a ‘green party’ would nudge India to take the issue more seriously.

Let’s begin with the basics.

Why climate change needs to be a part of political discussions?

Climate change is an important issue for India. On one hand, we are likely to be one of the worst affected countries by climate change. India is ranked 7th globally in terms of the global climate risk index score. Climate change will impact where we live, what we eat and how we work. On the other hand, given its position as the most populous country in the world and one of the fastest growing large economies how India addresses the challenges of energy transition and sustainable development will have a huge impact on the world’s ability to meet climate goals. India will have to lead the world by setting an example of how a country can develop while also reducing its dependence on fossil fuels.

Laws and policies have a huge role to play in addressing the issue of climate change. For instance, the subsidies given by the Indian government have helped in popularising EVs in India, an important lever in meeting our net zero goals. In Brazil, the amount of deforestation seen in the Amazon went up massively during the previous Bolsanaro government and the last 1 year under Lula’s rule has already seen that come down. Governments, through the laws they enact and the policies they implement wield a lot of power in deciding the path we take to address the challenge of climate change.

Hence, it’s important that issued related to climate change feature in political debates and we understand what a political party’s stance is on them, as an indicator of the kind of policies it is likely to put in place were it to come to power.

Does 'climate change’ feature in India’s political discussions?

In other countries you will often hear the politicians being called ‘climate denier’. India doesn’t really have ‘climate deniers’. If you don’t talk much about ‘climate change’ as an issue in the first place, the question of knowing whether someone is a ‘climate denier’ doesn’t arise!

‘Sustainable Bharat’ features as a section in the BJP manifesto and ‘Environment, climate change and disaster management’ features in the Congress manifesto, albeit on the last page.

However, this is not to say that related issues haven’t featured in manifestos at all. Items such as electric vehicles, energy transition, batteries for storage, recycling, air pollution and water management are part of the manifestos, but haven’t taken up much talk time in campaigning. Those narratives have been dominated by the more urgent issues such as unemployment, national security, poverty alleviation. The point that’s getting missed is that all of these challenges are likely to become worse in the face of climate change - the poor will suffer the most, droughts affecting agriculture will become worse and climate migration may pose a real threat to our border states. On the other hand, the new industries springing up to meet the needs of the energy transition may present an opportunity to generate employment for India’s large population. However the linkages between these issues and climate change are neither fully recognized nor talked about by political parties.

What is a ‘Green party’?

A ‘Green party’ is a formally recognized political party that puts environmental concerns at the forefront. Global greens is a worldwide group that has green parties from 72 countries.

The world’s first political party to campaign from an ‘environmental’ platform was the United Tasmania Group, which contested the April 1972 state election in Tasmania, Australia.

Since then, there have been green parties mainly in Europe, but also in several other parts of the world including Canada, South Africa, Brazil and Mongolia.

How have green parties fared around the world?

Green parties have seen the most success in Europe, especially in Northern and Western Europe.

Source: How Green politics are changing Europe (BBC)

Green parties have been gaining vote share and also seeing greater representation in parliaments. They have also been able to form coalitions and become part of the rling government in several countries including Finland, Sweden and Austria. In most of these cases, they have been able to push for more ambitious targets for lowering carbon emissions with policies aimed at faster adoption of renewable energy, and aggressive plans for refitting the transport, agricultural and buildings sectors to make it more energy efficient and electricity run.

However, Green parties have faced backlash from rural voters who are more dependent on driving and less affluent voters for whom higher electricity costs or the costs of replacing household appliances would be more burdensome.

So… does India have a ‘Green party’?

India’s first and only green party - India Greens Party (iGP) - was founded in 2017 and is fielding a grand total of 3 candidates in the current general elections. Its stated aim is to bring environmental issues to the forefront and change the conversation on climate change. However, given the almost negligible awareness about its existence in the first place and how much I had to scour the internet to find anything about it, we can safely say that India doesn’t have a green party for all practical purposes.

What could we achieve if we had a green party do in India?

• Start a conversation on ‘climate change’

  The biggest challenge we have in India is that ‘climate change’ is not part of mainstream discussions. Climate change is a widespread issue which is affecting diverse areas like agriculture, transport, weather, health and water to name a few. Today these are looked at as disparate issues and most people don't even recognise that there is a common underlying link to all of them. The danger of looking at them without taking the climate change angle into account is that we may end up only applying band aid solutions without addressing the root cause. Hence a conversation that recognises climate change as an underlying issue and its link to the impacts we are seeing is important. If there is a green party with some scale, given the whole identity of this party is linked to putting the environment first, it will spur a conversation on ‘climate change and its many impact’.

• Give environmental interests representation

  While, its true that the majority of India may not care much about a conversation on climate change, which seems like an abstract topic when they are many more urgent issues such as jobs and food, there are pockets where this issue may be seen as important. Maybe a constituency in Bangalore that saw an acute water crisis may be willing to engage conversation on water and listen to how we need to balance development with environmental concerns for a sustainable future. This may result in a few wins and start giving representation to leaders who believe in prioritising environment and sustainability.

• Be part of the government: Get a seat at the table

  Next step is that they are part of coalitions to help form a majority, which means they get to be part of the government, hold portfolios and exercise power. Once part of the government they can influence policies and push for more ambitious decarbonisation targets, like we have seen happen in some countries in Europe.

Why a green party may not work in India?

The most common argument against environmentalism in a developing country like ours is the ‘Development v/s Environment’ narrative - that choosing to protect the environment comes at a cost of development. For instance, preventing mining to protect forests comes in the way of development that could have happened if the country had access to the rich minerals that could be mined.

What the ‘Green party’ will keep saying to ‘Development’

The ‘development v/s environment’ narrative is an oversimplification. There are ways to ensure development while also ensuring we protect the environment. That is actually the only way in which the development can be sustainable i.e. we can continue to develop in a manner where our future generations can develop too.

However political narratives in our country are hardly so nuanced and A ‘Green party’ that puts the environment at the forefront runs the risk of being seen as ‘anti-development’. Such a perception, will mean that the ‘green party’ is doomed to fail and the conversation on climate change we are hoping it will start will never get off the ground or worse create more opposition than support.

India needs to start talking about ‘climate change’, but not necessarily with a ‘Green party’

We may be better off addressing the challenge of climate change without putting a ‘green’ label and sparking an ‘environment v/s development’ debate.

In conclusion, I believe ‘climate change’ needs to become a mainstream topic in political discussions, however a ‘green party’ by itself may not be very helpful, or worse do more harm than good.

What do you think? Leave your thoughts in comments!