Abstract:

The authors take a brief look at the present status of India's climate commitments, the implications of these recovery packages in the post COVID-19 crises, and the road ahead for clean and green development. COVID 19 has created roadblocks with short term and long-term implications for the Indian economy, society and the world at large. While it is acknowledged that both the pandemic and climate crises are emergencies which need to be addressed simultaneously, the severity and intensity of the impacts vary. Governments across the globe have announced recovery and stimulus packages to combat the economic crises caused due to the pandemic. Accordingly, the recovery packages announced by governments to address the impacts also vary in nature, coverage and scale. While it is felt that some of the recovery measures announced in India, especially in the agriculture, MSME and waste management sectors, have potential to be green, their major orientation at the moment is towards ensuring livelihoods and restarting economic activities in organised and unorganised sectors of rural and urban India. All countries including India need to enhance cooperation in order to confront climate change and COVID-19 at the same time, as “the climate emergency is like the COVID-19 emergency. As COVID challenge is likely to stay for quite some time with most countries, it is imperative that they look for windows of opportunities in the existing and future packages to take greener actions rather than attempting to redesign the recovery packages themselves. The pandemic provides an opportunity to leverage on the digitalisation of energy infrastructures and systems especially for daily operations. India needs significant financial resources to address climate change goals and more so during the COVID 19 pandemic to ensure continuity and progress.