India's Chief Economic Advisor, V. Anantha Nageswaran, has said that developing countries must tackle climate change using their own approaches, as the "one-size-fits-all" approach of the West is ineffective.
Nageswaran said in the annual economic survey tabled in Parliament on Monday that the current global strategies for climate change are "flawed and not universally applicable." Developing nations should have the freedom to choose their own paths, as they need to balance development goals with effective climate action.
Western practices harmful
He warned that adopting Western practices could be disastrous for India, where culture, economy, and societal norms are closely intertwined with the environment.
Despite making significant progress in climate action, India often faces criticism for not following Western solutions. Nageswaran said this criticism arises from a lack of understanding of India's unique social and cultural context, which is already rich in sustainable development ideas.
He argued that Western approaches do not address the root problem of overconsumption but rather change the means of achieving it.
AI is against climate change goals
The global push for energy-intensive technologies like Artificial Intelligence and large-scale mining of rare earth minerals has only increased fossil fuel consumption, which goes against the goals of climate change mitigation, he said.
The Economic Survey 2023–24 said that India's ethos promotes a harmonious relationship with nature, contrasting with the culture of overconsumption in developed countries and offering sustainable solutions to Western problems.
For instance, the meat production process in the developed world presents food security risks and threatens the degradation of critical land, water, and natural resources. The reliance on human-edible crops to feed livestock has created a 'food-feed competition', with less than half of the cereals produced today going towards direct human consumption, with even lower figures in many developed economies.
Similarly, the adoption of nuclear families in the Western model of living places significant land and resource demands on the environment, as urban nucleated settlements contribute to 'urban sprawl'. A shift towards traditional multi-generational households would promote sustainable housing, the survey suggested.
Nageswaran said that rich nations often ask India to take more responsibility, claiming it is the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter after the US and China.
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Industrial revolution fueled by fossil fuel
"What is constantly de-emphasised is that since the period of the first settlement of societies, Western nations with a forward position on the industrial revolution indulged in fossil-fueled development with reckless abandon that led to the position the world is in today," he said.
Nageswaran also pointed out that although developing nations have been pushing for recognition of historical emissions, the term is buried in complex reports and often dismissed. "Even copious amounts of data inundation cannot change a basic fact: energy is a per-capita phenomenon," he said.
