The global conversation on climate action has become unmoored from credibility. Declarations continue, but delivery falters. The architecture of international commitment is weakened. Most advanced economies continue to operate with carbon-intensive systems while offering timelines that exceed political cycles and ignore frontline realities. For India, the consequences of inaction are neither abstract nor distant. The risks are local, immediate, and intensifying.
India stands exposed to the full spectrum of climate volatility. The question is no longer whether India should lead, but whether it can afford not to. Conventional growth pathways are no longer tenable. Replicating the material intensity, spatial form, and ecological footprint of western development models would lock India into a cycle of vulnerability. The alternative is to reimagine it—grounded in sustainability, designed for resilience, and aligned with long-term national interest.
The task is formidable. Accelerating renewable energy deployment is essential, but doing so without addressing the fiscal condition of discoms and inadequacies of transmission infrastructure will deliver diminishing returns. Building climate-resilient agriculture cannot be reduced to technology adoption alone. It requires comprehensive land and water governance, robust agrometeorological services, and financial mechanisms that reward conservation and productivity. Transitioning from coal involves a deeper reckoning—with state revenue models, labour dislocation, and regional economic structures that rely heavily on extraction. This is not a simple substitution problem. It is a political economy challenge that demands nuanced, long-horizon planning.
India’s industrial strategy must also reconcile ambition with preparedness. While policy direction is moving towards green manufacturing and clean tech supply chains, several enablers remain underdeveloped. Domestic production of batteries, solar modules, and green hydrogen will not achieve scale or competitiveness without dependable infrastructure, stable offtake commitments, and regulatory certainty. The wider institutional ecosystem—from land and environmental clearances to logistics and capital access—requires strengthening if India is to become a credible global hub for sustainable manufacturing.
Financial architecture must adapt at an equal pace. A homogenised and made-for-India domestic carbon market has the potential to reprice externalities and guide investment decisions. However, market signals are meaningless without a foundation of integrity. Measurement, reporting, and verification protocols must be credible, consistent, and enforceable. ESG frameworks must transition from aspirational declarations to regulatory compliance, anchored in disclosures that are material, comparable, and subject to scrutiny. Climate risk must be internalised within banking supervision, insurance regulation, and corporate governance standards. They are core to ensuring that the financial system is aligned with the structural risks and opportunities of a low-carbon future.
Institutional capacity remains an enduring bottleneck. National missions often falter at the point of implementation due to fragmented authority, limited fiscal autonomy, and constrained administrative bandwidth at the state and local levels. Urban governance, in particular, is misaligned with the complexity of sustainability transitions. From mobility and housing to waste and water systems, Indian cities require empowered institutions with the mandate and resources to plan, coordinate, and deliver at scale. Without this, urban sustainability will remain a project-led narrative rather than a systems-level shift.
Resource governance must also evolve. Water stress, already a critical constraint across sectors, continues to be managed reactively. Policy remains fragmented across levels, while investment flows into short-term interventions rather than long-term resilience. What is needed is a coherent national framework that integrates water efficiency, ecological restoration, climate-resilient cropping, and urban demand management. Without institutional convergence and sustained financing, India’s sustainability efforts will remain uneven and exposed.
Leadership in this domain cannot rest on declarations or comparative benchmarks. It must be grounded in institutional coherence, policy realism, and implementation discipline. The world is entering a decade of climate disruption and geopolitical fragmentation. In that context, India’s real power will not come from compliance with external targets but from internal conviction that sustainability is the sharpest expression of national interest. It secures jobs, shields lives, attracts capital, and projects credibility.
This will require coherence across ministries, deeper coordination between the Centre and states, and a sharp focus on execution. It will require new forms of climate federalism, and a rethinking of how fiscal transfers, green incentives, and public procurement are aligned with environmental goals. It will also demand a much tighter connection between climate strategy and economic planning, especially in trade, industrial policy, and public finance.
India should build a sustainability model rooted in its own priorities, realities, and aspirations. India must move forward, not because it has been told to, but because it has every reason to. Climate is a whole-of-government, whole-of-economy mission.
The author is Corporate Advisor & Independent Director on Corporate Boards, and Author of 'Family and Dhanda'. Views are personal.
