Blocker or Blueprint? India on the World Stage
About this episode
The episode explores India's complex role in global climate negotiations and its perception on the world stage.
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…
People in this episode
Host: Tom Rivett-Carnac
Guests: Christiana Figueres, Manjeev Singh Puri, Harjeet Singh, Dia Mirza
Topics covered
- climate change
- India
- COP26
- global negotiations
- energy policy
- climate finance
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: COP26, Copenhagen, Carbon Brief
Places: India, Glasgow
More episodes of Outrage + Optimism
- What’s India Building?: Tales from the Biggest Transition on Earth
- India: Life Inside Delhi's 'Airpocalypse'
- The Clock is Ticking: Forty Seconds to Explain the Climate Crisis
- Beyond Politics: Should we take the heat out of the climate crisis?
- Cheapest Energy in History. Still Heading for 3 Degrees?
- Europe’s Summer of Fire: The New Normal?
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