This year can prove to be an environmental achievement year for India, which is further made possible by India’s G20 presidency
India has seen a localised climate disaster nearly every day in the first nine months of 2022, according to the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). The country experienced extreme weather events on 241 of 273 days till October 1, which claimed 2,755 lives, affected 1.8 million hectares of crop area, destroyed 416,667 houses and killed 69,007 livestock.
This pattern of destruction is a testament to the fact that climate change presents a clear and present danger for the world in general and India in particular. India cannot afford a rerun of the same or worse in 2023 or subsequent years, and to ensure this there is an express need to change the narrative regarding how India perceives environmental conservation and fights climate change starting 2023.
As countless COP events and other environmental conferences have shown that mere talk is not getting the world anywhere on climate change, it is time now to establish action driven milestones in the fight against climate change. If the world is faltering on this effort, India must take the lead.
As part of the same, 2023 presents an opportunity for India to make progress in multiple spheres of environmental conservation based on technology and innovation. The roadmap towards ensuring a greener 2023 must include various sectors of India and guiding them towards sustainable development.
For instance, currently, whenever the air quality index in Delhi touches severe levels, the government under the stage 3 of the Graded Response Action Plan puts a ban on the construction sector. This notoriety of the construction sector as the usual suspect has to end and for this the government in cohesion with the sector stakeholders and ecological experts has to increase stress on green buildings and urban forests.
Additionally, small scale builders have abnormally high levels of natural resource consumption; they must be made accountable and sensitised towards adopting more ecologically sustainable practices.
Similarly, consumer electronics and the e-waste sector must be overhauled in a major way to account for the well-being of the environment. Due to ever changing technology the quantum of e-waste generated is tremendous. This is exacerbated due to low e-waste recycling capabilities in India.
Hearables such as headphones and chargers comprise the most of e-waste generated. The government needs to adopt a two-pronged strategy to tackle e-waste menace in 2023, first on the producer side, the government must push the companies to make it mandatory to ask consumers to deposit/exchange their old headphones when they buy a new one.
Additionally, the e-waste collection and recycling mechanism must be made sharper, and accessible to everyone. This can be done by starting doorstep e-waste collection drives from residential, industrial and corporate areas.
The year of 2023 must also become the year of electric vehicles (EV). The government must ensure that safety of EV usage, plentiful charging stations, especially along the national highways and incentives and subsidies for buying EVs are handled on priority basis in the new year. The EV technology and production has caught the fancy of India Inc. Recently, Hero Motors has announced Rs 1,500 crore investment into EV production and technology.
Given this kind of push, it will become easier for the government to make India EV ready possible in near future. But perhaps the biggest push the government must aim at is the electric commercial vehicle segment in India.
Currently, diesel trucks run by imported oil cause high levels of greenhouse gas and air pollution emissions. India imports 88 per cent of the oil it uses and of the total petroleum consumed by the country’s transport sector, nearly 60 per cent is used by freight trucks. These trucks are responsible for 71 per cent of the carbon dioxide emissions, 74 per cent of the particulate matter emissions, and 55 per cent of the nitrogen oxide emissions from road vehicles.
Based on India’s current grid emissions, electric trucks would reduce greenhouse gas emissions nine per cent, to 35 per cent per km compared with diesel trucks. A study from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UCLA shows that advances in battery technology and decreased battery costs in recent years mean that battery electric trucks would be more affordable to operate than diesel, and India could become a world leader in producing electric commercial vehicles. This transition enabled by the government in 2023 can help India reduce its reliance on imported oil, improve the air quality, and meet the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2070.
The Year 2023 can prove to be an environmental achievement year for India, made further possible by India’s G20 presidency. For this to happen, a roadmap based upon the above factors is crucial.
(The author is a policy analyst)
