COP30: India’s climate mitigation pledges are all rhetoric, little substance

On Saturday (November 8), Indian Ambassador to Brazil, Dinesh Bhatia, delivered “India’s national statement” at the leaders’ summit of COP30 in Brazil’s Belam, summing up India’s climate mitigation commitments since 2014. The key points he flagged hide more than they reveal.

There were four big claims:

(i) “Between 2005 and 2020”, India reduced emission intensity of GDP by 36 per cent,

(ii) Non-fossil power accounts for over 50 per cent installed capacity, achieving the NDC (Nationally Determined Commitments) target five years ahead of schedule; emerged as the world’s third-largest producer of renewable energy with nearly 200 GW of “installed renewable capacity”.

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(iii) Forest and tree covers have improved, adding carbon sink of 2.29 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent created “between 2005 and 2021” and

(iv) Indian initiatives like the International Solar Alliance, now unites over 120 countries, promotes affordable solar energy and South-South collaboration.

Here is a reality check.

India’s emissions: Highest growth in world

India gave the emission intensity reduction data between 2005 (base year) and 2020. Its first NDC pledge of August 2022 is to cut it down by 45 per cent by 2030 (NDC 2022).

The emissions here refer to greenhouse gases (GHGs) that damage the ozone layer and are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) — the primary ones — hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6).

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India’s data at the COP30 is five years too old (up to 2020).

What is the current level of reduction? Here is why it has not been revealed.

The UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2025, released on November 4, 2025 says, in 2024 “the highest absolute growth in emissions occurred in India”, adding, the growth in India’s emission (3.6 per cent) was “the second highest” — next to Indonesia (4.6 per cent).

It mapped India’s emissions, the image of which is reproduced below.

India is among the world’s six largest emitters of GHGs, the others being China, the US, the EU, Russia and Indonesia.

The UNEP report shows China’s emissions are slowing down (growth rate of 0.5 per cent in 2024) and headed downwards; that of the US and EU on sharp decline for several years, Russia’s is going up but projected to fall; Indonesia’s going up.

The saving grace: India’s per-capita emission is the lowest among these six.

Green energy capacity over 50 pc, actual electricity produced 22.5 pc

India claims to have achieved over 50 per cent of installed capacity for electricity from green energy by 2025 — five years’ ahead of the schedule (2030) — and has installed 200 GW capacity.

That is right but what India did not reveal is that the actual electricity produced from the green energy sources is just 22.4 per cent of the total — up to January 2025, as MoS for New and Renewable Energy Shripad Naik had told the Rajya Sabha on March 11, 2025.

The main reasons for low electricity generation are very low transmission and distribution infrastructures and storage capacity — leading to massive idle capacity.

On the other hand, a Coal Ministry statement of April 4, 2025 said, coal contributed “over 74 per cent of total power generation” — with an installed capacity of just 49.2 per cent of the total.

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India has declared it is adding 80 GW of coal-fired power plants by 2032 — despite the fact that the National Electricity Plan of 2018 clearly said: “Since 47,855 MW are under different stages of construction and are likely to materialise during 2017-22, so no additional capacity is required.”

India has declared that it would be exporting coal by FY26 and has extended coal mining contract periods in 2022 for 30 years — till 2052.

At the COP26 (Glasgow, 2021), India refused to pledge to “phase out” coal (along with China citing its need for cheap energy to power development), which would have meant not to sanction new coal mines or coal-fired projects. In 2023, The Washington Post commented on India’s policy: “In India, ‘phase-down’ of coal actually means rapid expansion of (coal) mining”.

At the COP28 (2023), India won when the final resolution removed “phase-out” for coal and replaced it with “phase-down” (reduce dependency and shift to renewable). In the bargain, the world lost because the resolution also removed “phase-down” and “phase-out” for oil and gas.

At the COP28, India skipped pledges to decarbonise energy, cut methane and cooling-related GHGs.

Cover-up for forests and trees

India’s claims of rapidly increasing forest and tree cover — thereby raising carbon sink “between 2005 and 2021” — is grossly misleading too.

The first red flag is why the data was shared up to 2021 when the State of Forest Report 2023 was released on December 21, 2024?

This report claims that forests and trees continued to grow progressively, taking the cover to 7.15 lakh sq km (21.76 per cent of geographical area) and 8.27 lakh sq km (3.41 per cent of geographical area), respectively — raising the total green cover to 25.17 per cent of the geographical area. It also claims that India’s carbon stock had “already achieved a target of 2.29 billion tonnes”. India’s NDC commitment is 2.5-3.0 billion tonnes by 2030.

A group of 60 former civil servants (Constitution Conduct Group) wrote a strong letter to the ministry (MOEFCC) questioning its methodology (“full of flaws”) and claims. They listed the following objections:

• Orchards, gardens, coconut, oil palm and rubber plantations counted as forests (which “do not qualify as forests”);

• More than 3 lakh hectare forest land diverted during 1996-2023 for development projects but not reflected in it;

• As per this report, India lost 1,488 sq km of unclassed forests since the SFR of 2021 “which reveals a decrease in forest area and not an increase of 1,445.81 sq kms as claimed”;

• India lost 14.9 lakh hectare of trees during 2013-2023 and

• No explanation given for “huge fluctuations” in states’ data for unclassed forests from one cycle of reporting to the next — “indicating that the data is unreliable”.

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In August 2024, the MoEFCC told the Parliament that India lost 1,734 sq km of forests to development activities in the previous 10 years.

The protest letter from the former civil servants is nothing new.

After the SFR 2021 was released in 2023, none accepted its findings.

Indian Express did a ground check and found that “unlikely patches” — such as private plantation on encroached and cleared reserve forests, tea gardens, betel nut clusters, village homesteads, roadside trees, urban housing area, VIP residences (Lutyens’ bungalows), and parts of educational and medical institutes like the RBI building, AIIMS, IIT — were counted as forest.

Reporters’ Collective analysed 20 years of SFRs to find that (i) every two years, average of 2,594 sq km of very dense and moderately dense forest turned into scrub/barren lands and simultaneously, 1,907 sq km of scrub/non-forest land also turned into very dense or moderately dense forest. It asked: “How does a near-barren piece of land turn into a dense or extremely dense patch of forest in merely two years?”

An UK-based business group had reported in 2023 that India was globally the “second highest” in deforestation, losing 6.68 hectares in recent years. Bypassing green laws and other constitutional protections (Forest Rights and PESA) for the scheduled areas, wholesale clearances to cut down forests are the norm now.

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Hitherto marked the “no-go” area, Chhattisgarh’s Hasdeo Arand, one of the few pristine and contiguous forests, has not only been carved into 23 “coal blocks”; the Adani group has almost cut down 1,898 hectares (19.98 sq km) of forest land for four of these mines.

A similar fate awaits the Great Nicobar Island where clearance has been given to cut down 130.75 sq km of forests for a mega transshipment port-airport-power plant-township project.

In its NDC pledge of 2022, India refused to protect forests (carbon sinks) or reduce deforestation stating that its forest and tree covers are growing by leaps and bounds.

India drowned in plastic

Few remember the Prime Minister received the UN’s highest environmental honour, the UNEP Champion of the Earth, in October 2018 for championing a solar alliance (along with then French President Francois Holland) and his “unprecedented pledge” to eliminate single-use plastic (SUP) by 2022”.

India’s green transition is happening — but more on paper, as explained earlier.

As for plastics, the UNEP may not know but India is sinking in plastics. In fact, a perfunctory ban on SUP was announced just months before it was to be eliminated, on July 1, 2022.

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In its June 2025 issue, India Today magazine said “India is downing in plastic” and “India is now the world’s biggest plastic polluter”.

India has neither alternatives for plastics nor any effective waste management policy.

India’s “no-go” areas include methane

India’s “national statement” at the COP30 didn’t reveal that it has three “no-go” areas: Coal, forests and agriculture. How it treats coal and forests is clear; it refused to touch methane (as also GHGs in cooling-related emissions) in its NDC and at the COP28 — without explaining why. Methane is second only to fossil fuel in causing severe damage to the environment, accentuating climate crisis.

Agriculture and cattle are the main source of methane and both are politically sensitive to India.

India defangs all green protections

India has damaged all the laws that protect its environment and prevent climate crisis in the past few years — undoing decades of hard work.

These include the PESA of 1996 (protects tribal areas covered in rich forests from mining and unrestrained development), Forest Rights Act of 2006 (gives tribals rights over their forests, keeps industry out) — which are bypassed by the Forest (Conservation) Rules of 2022 to give forest clearances. This is patently unconstitutional — since laws can’t be changed by any rule whatsoever, related or unrelated.

The Forest Conservation (Amendment) Act of 2023 gives wholesale exemptions from green clearances — for areas within 100 km of international border, up to 10 ha for construction of security-related infrastructure, up to 5 ha in areas inflicted with left-wing extremism, to “forestry” projects that include zoos and wildlife safaris and to private plantations and reforestations.

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The Jan Vishwas (Amendment) Act of 2023 de-criminalized violations of the Environment Protection Act of 1986, Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act of 1986 and Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act of 1974. Another such law is in the offing — further damaging the environment.

What India looks to do at COP30

India may have welcomed host Brazil’s initiative to establish the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) to protect forests and reaffirmed its commitment to multilateralism and safeguarding the architecture of the Paris Agreement (COP21, 2015) — limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, all countries to submit NDCs etc.) — but these shouldn’t be taken literally.

In fact, none of India’s climate mitigation pledges (including net-zero emission by 2070) should be taken literally because in actual policies and practices — except installing green energy capacity — it does just the opposite.