During his recently concluded five-nation tour, Prime Minister Narendra enlisted new members for the global initiatives led by India, the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) and the Global Biofuels Alliance (GBA). On the last leg, Prime Minister Modi and Namibian President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, among other things, announced the entry of Namibia into the Global Biofuels Alliance.
“Namibia submitted a letter of acceptance for joining the Global Biofuels Alliance,” the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) posted on X soon after the visit concluded. A little before that, while presenting the list of outcomes from the official visit of PM Modi to Trinidad & Tobago, the MEA had said that the Caribbean nation announced its joining both the GBA and the CDRI.
Of the many outcomes from the five-nation tour of the prime minister, is the interest that many nations have evinced in the Global Biofuels Alliance.
Biofuels refer to renewable fuels that are essentially derived from biomass. The biomass can be obtained from plants or agricultural residue, or even from animal, domestic, or industrial biowaste.
The countries of the Global South have immense potential in tapping the biomass as a sustainable fuel source, as they face the consequences of climate change.
With all these considerations, the Global Biofuels Alliance was launched in September 2023 on the sidelines of the G20 summit hosted by India. The alliance is aimed at facilitating international cooperation and intensifying the use of sustainable biofuels, along with facilitating global biofuels trade and technical support for national biofuel programmes.
As many as 29 countries, including the US and Japan, and 14 international organisations, including multilateral development banks and the International Energy Agency (IEA), are its members as of July 1, 2025. India has been repeating the need to reform the current leading global multilateral platforms, especially the UN and the Bretton Woods institutions.
Much of what is today termed as the Global South was not part of the decision-making process when these institutions were formed, with India and many countries in Asia and Africa barely stitching themselves together after freedom from the colonial past. This sentiment was rightly tapped by Prime Minister Modi when he addressed the Parliament of Ghana earlier in the month. “The histories of India and Ghana bear the scars of colonial rule. But our spirits have always remained free and fearless,” Modi said.
Of the 29 members, a majority are from countries that share a similar sentiment. India’s approach was neatly summed up by PM Modi in one of his recent speeches. “The Global South has expectations from us. To fulfill them, we must follow the principle of ‘Lead by Example’. India is fully committed to working shoulder to shoulder with all partners to achieve mutual goals,” was what PM Modi had declared in his statement during one of the sessions at the 17th BRICS Summit in Brazil.
[The writer is an architect interested in environmental and developmental issues]