How do policymakers, businesses and civil society in India approach the challenge of climate change? What do they believe global climate negotiations will achieve and how? And how are Indian political and policy debates internalizing climate change? Relatively little is known globally about internal climate debate in emerging industrializing countries, but what happens in rapidly growing economies like India’s will increasingly shape global climate change outcomes. This Handbook brings together prominent voices from India, including policymakers, politicians, business leaders, civil society activists and academics, to build a composite picture of contemporary Indian climate politics and policy. One section lays out the range of positions and substantive issues that shape Indian views on global climate negotiations. Another delves into national politics around climate change. A third looks at how climate change is beginning to be internalized in sectoral policy discussions over energy, urbanization, water, and forests. The volume is introduced by an essay that lays out the critical issues shaping climate politics in India, and its implications for global politics. The papers show that, within India, climate change is approached primarily as a developmental challenge and is marked by efforts to explore how multiple objectives of development, equity and climate mitigation can simultaneously be met. In addition, Indian perspectives on climate negotiations are in a state of flux. Considerations of equity across countries and a focus on the primary responsibility for action of wealthy countries continue to be central, but there are growing voices of concern on the impacts of climate change on India. How domestic debates over climate governance are resolved in the coming years, and the evolution of India’s global negotiation stance are likely to be important inputs toward creating shared understandings across countries in the years ahead, and identify ways forward. This volume on the Indian experience with climate change and development is a valuable contribution to both purposes.

How do policymakers, businesses and civil society in India approach the challenge of climate change? What do they believe global climate negotiations will achieve and how? And how are Indian political and policy debates internalizing climate change? Relatively little is known globally about internal climate debate in emerging industrializing countries, but what happens in rapidly growing economies like India’s will increasingly shape global climate change outcomes. This Handbook brings together prominent voices from India, including policymakers, politicians, business leaders, civil society activists and academics, to build a composite picture of contemporary Indian climate politics and policy. One section lays out the range of positions and substantive issues that shape Indian views on global climate negotiations. Another delves into national politics around climate change. A third looks at how climate change is beginning to be internalized in sectoral policy discussions over energy, urbanization, water, and forests. The volume is introduced by an essay that lays out the critical issues shaping climate politics in India, and its implications for global politics. The papers show that, within India, climate change is approached primarily as a developmental challenge and is marked by efforts to explore how multiple objectives of development, equity and climate mitigation can simultaneously be met. In addition, Indian perspectives on climate negotiations are in a state of flux. Considerations of equity across countries and a focus on the primary responsibility for action of wealthy countries continue to be central, but there are growing voices of concern on the impacts of climate change on India. How domestic debates over climate governance are resolved in the coming years, and the evolution of India’s global negotiation stance are likely to be important inputs toward creating shared understandings across countries in the years ahead, and identify ways forward. This volume on the Indian experience with climate change and development is a valuable contribution to both purposes.

Riven with scientific uncertainty, contending interests, and competing interpretations, the problem of climate change poses an existential challenge. For India, such a challenge is compounded by the immediate concerns of eradicating poverty and accelerating development. Moreover, India has played a relatively limited role thus far in causing the problem. Despite these complicating factors, India has to engage this challenge because a pathway to development innocent of climate change is no longer possible. The volume seeks to encourage public debate on climate change as part of India’s larger development discourse. This volume brings together leading researchers and practitioners—negotiators, activists, and policymakers—to lay out the emergent debate on climate change in India. Through these chapters, the contributors hope to deepen clarity both on why India should engage with climate change and how it can best do so, even while appreciating and representing the challenges inherent in doing so.

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the growing transnational climate movement. A dual focus on climate politics and civil society provides a hitherto unavailable broad and systematic analysis of the current global movement, highlighting how its dynamic and diverse character can play an important role in environmental politics and climate protection. The range of contributors, from well-known academics to activist-scholars, look at climate movements in the developed and developing world, north and south, small and large, central and marginal. The movement is examined as a whole and as single actors, thereby capturing its scope, structure, development, activities and influence. The book thoroughly addresses theoretical approaches, from classic social movement theory to the influence of environmental justice frames, and follows this with a systematic focus on regions, specific NGOs and activists, cases and strategies, as well as relations with peripheral groups. In its breadth, balance and depth, this accessible volume offers a fresh and important take on the question of social mobilization around climate change, making it an essential text for advanced undergraduates, postgraduate students and researchers in the social sciences.

This book comprehensively describes essential research and projects on climate change and biodiversity. Moreover, it includes contributions on how to promote the climate agenda and biodiversity conservation at the local level. Climate change as a whole and global warming in particular are known to have a negative impact on biodiversity in three main ways. Firstly, increases in temperatures are detrimental to a number of organisms, especially those in sensitive habitats such as coral reefs and rainforests. Secondly, the pressures posed by a changing climate may lead to sets of responses in areas as varied as phenology, range and physiology of living organisms, often leading to changes in their lifecycles (especially but not only in reproduction), losses in productivity or even death. In some cases, the very survival of very sensitive species may be endangered. Thirdly, the impacts of climate change on biodiversity will be felt in the short term with regard to some species and ecosystems, but also in the medium and long term in many biomes. Indeed, if left unchecked, some of these impacts may be irreversible. Many individual governments, financial institutes and international donors are currently spending billions of dollars on projects addressing climate change and biodiversity, but with little coordination. Quite often, the emphasis is on adaptation efforts, with little emphasis on the connections between physio-ecological changes and the lifecycles and metabolisms of fauna and flora, or the influence of poor governance on biodiversity. As such, there is a recognized need to not only better understand the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, but to also identify, test and implement measures aimed at managing the many risks that climate change poses to fauna, flora and micro-organisms. In particular, the question of how to restore and protect ecosystems from the impact of climate change also has to be urgently addressed. This book was written to address this need. The respective papers explore matters related to the use of an ecosystem-based approach to increase local adaptation capacity, consider the significance of a protected areas network in preserving biodiversity in a changing northern European climate, and assess the impacts of climate change on specific species, including wild terrestrial animals. The book also presents a variety of case studies such as the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, the effects of climate change on the biodiversity of Aleppo pine forest in Senalba (Algeria), climate change and biodiversity response in the Niger Delta region, and the effects of forest fires on the biodiversity and the soil characteristics of tropical peatlands in Indonesia. This is a truly interdisciplinary publication, and will benefit all scholars, social movements, practitioners and members of governmental agencies engaged in research and/or executing projects on climate change and biodiversity around the world.

"Climate change presents one of the greatest challenges of our time, and has become one of the defining issues of the twenty-first century. The radical changes which both developed and developing countries will need to make, in economic and in legal terms, to respond to climate change are unprecedented. International law, including treaty regimes, institutions, and customary international law, needs to address the myriad challenges and consequences of climate change, including variations in the weather patterns, sea level rise, and the resulting migration of peoples. ... This book addresses the major legal dimensions of the problems caused by climate change: including questions ranging from how to implement international legal frameworks at the national level, to how carbon trading systems can be used as a means of reducing the costs of meeting emission reduction targets."--Book jacket.