India's Road Map to COP33 - Keeping the Momentum on Climate Leadership

Article penned by Meera Gopal addresses and explains India’s position, commitment, and contribution towards constructive discussions on climate change, especially in the context of the Global South. The text also highlights, despite having the lowest per capita emissions among G20 nations, India led the charge in adopting significant climate initiatives during its G20 presidency. With the proposal to host COP33 in 2028, it is certain that India will continue to lead on climate action through pragmatic internationalism to find multilateral solutions in an increasingly polarized world.

-  Meera Gopal

The year 2023 was a watershed moment for India—with the G20 presidency and the Clean Energy Ministerial. The country has been actively positioning itself as a leader of the Global South—which became the driver of the G20 success—with India delivering a consensus-based communique despite all contrary predictions. India’s engagement leading up to 28th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP28), in tandem with its G20 priorities, focused on climate finance as a key issue, with targeted engagement on issues such as the new collective quantified goal (post-2025 climate finance goal). At the Leaders’ Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighted India’s early achievement of the emissions’ intensity reduction targets and proposed hosting COP33 in 2028, when the next Global Stocktake is scheduled to take place. Internationally, thus, India has emerged as a unique leader, bridging the Global North and the Global South, experts have attributed it to India’s four cooperation tracks on multilateral, multilateral, trilateral, and bilateral levels (Xavier and Nachiappan 2023).