At COP26 in Glasgow, India famously asked to change one word in the final text. ‘Phase out’ became ‘phase down’. The COP President fought back tears, as country after country branded this a moment of shame. For many, India has been a villain of that story ever since.
But like all stories about this country, the truth is far more complex.
In the last of three episodes from India, Tom Rivett-Carnac asks what the world gets right and wrong about the pivotal role that India is playing on the global climate stage. And Christiana Figueres returns to the microphone to trace the argument India has been making in every negotiating room for three decades - and where it might go next.
We meet Ambassador Manjeev Singh Puri, who was at Copenhagen in 2009, when the rich world promised billions of climate finance to the developing world. But much of that money never came, and what did arrive came mostly as debt. He has a theory about why India still doesn't get the credit he believes it deserves, and it has nothing to do with the climate.
Harjeet Singh, who has campaigned on this for twenty years, shares why his own government treats coal as a matter of national security rather than energy policy.
And Dia Mirza tells us what she did when the Chief Justice of India called people like her a ‘lobby’.
So is India the blocker, or the blueprint? And what happens to the rules when the countries that wrote them stop keeping them?
📄 Read Carbon Brief's analysis of India's new climate pledge, filed after the country hit its non-fossil target five years early
🔨 Revisit how COP26 ended in Glasgow - the compromise deal, the last-minute change from phasing coal out to phasing it down
💰 Understand what the $100 billion was actually worth, the Oxfam analysis finding that of $83.3 billion reported for 2020, the real value was at most $24.5 billion
📉 Check the Climate Target Update Tracker, the running record of every 2035 climate target filed so far
⚖️ Read the International Commission of Jurists on India's foreign funding law, under which thousands of organisations have lost their licences
🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe
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Senior Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
India Producer and translator: Adnan Bhat
Show Runner: Caitlin Hanrahan
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
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