The 16th Finance Commission can catalyse climate governance

The panel could push for a national carbon accounting framework among other climate reforms

- AMAR PATNAIK is a former member of the Rajya Sabha and a former bureaucrat with the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

It is widely expected that the 16th Finance Commission (FC) will look into the growing complaints of states against the Centre dipping into the tax cess and surcharge pools, which are not shared with them, while decreasing the Centre's contribution to centrally sponsored schemes. But there are other crucial areas too that the FC can nudge the Centre and states to look at beyond the traditional tax devolution criteria followed by most FCs (like state population, area, forest cover and tax efforts).

Given the well-known challenges facing the world and particularly India as the adverse effects of climate change assume 'polycrisis' proportions, with multiple points of worry, there is a pressing need to steer policies across sectors towards a low-carbon regime. Policymakers and implementers need to believe that 'net zero' is actually 'net positive,' as India has shown so far with its high GDP growth trajectory while doing more on the climate front than most other countries.

During its presentation before the 16th FC, the Biju Janata Dal, led by former Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik, made a series of climate-responsive governance suggestions to the Commission on areas such as climate budgeting, climate budget tagging, sectoral climate change impact appraisals and other governance initiatives.