When India’s minister for environment, Jairam Ramesh, flatly refused to accept legally binding carbon emission cuts during a news conference with visiting US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, he added to Western impressions that India has become an obstinate holdout on multilateral climate change negotiations.

As one of the emerging economies whose carbon footprint will broaden in the coming decades, India has been criticised for its rigidity. In a series of opinion editorials on the eve of Secretary Clinton’s trip to India, influential Western newspapers like the New York Times and the Financial Times argued that she must deliver a “tough message” that India should alter its stand in favour of a global agreement at the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Conference.

Secretary Clinton arrived in India with the US Special Envoy for Climate Change, Todd Stern, in tow- an unexpected move that reportedly “shocked” the hosts. Minister Ramesh used the word “pressure” to describe the Western push to get India on board the carbon cuts bandwagon and added that there was also a “threat” of carbon tariffs on Indian exports. The atmospherics of glowing US-India strategic partnership could not mask the tension.

One argument being made by critics of India’s inflexibility on climate change is that its bid to be recognised as a global power will remain unfulfilled if it fails to participate in making international rules and institutions on burning issues such as global warming. The danger that India will remain outside the post-Kyoto climate regime and thus gain the reputation of a pariah is being bandied about.

Indians know all too well what it feels to be an outcaste from their four-decades-long experience outside the nuclear non-proliferation regime. From denial of technology to sanctions, India faced a plethora of restrictions from Western powers for turning its back on the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). A repeat of such marginalisation on climate change is a Damocles Sword hanging over New Delhi’s neck as it fine-tunes its position prior to the Copenhagen meeting.

But more than the fear of being sidelined as ‘irresponsible’, India should be paying attention to rumours that the US and China are in the process of striking a secret deal on emission cuts. Up to this point, China and India have been seen in conjunction as the two leading states evading a putatively brave new age of planetary obligations. But if China breaks away and enters into a pragmatic understanding with the US, India will be exposed as a sore thumb that cannot compete with China in designing global policy architecture. 

Scuttlebutt of a Washington-Beijing climate accord is not smoke without a fire. European diplomats sounded out the press corps during the recent G-8 summit in Italy that they apprehend the US forging an “independent deal with China outside the global negotiating framework.” A Danish climate change official expressed concern that a separate US-China diplomatic track would “find a lower common denominator” and whittle down the EU’s ambitious carbon cuts agenda. The Europeans are wary of losing out to an outsmarting manoeuvre that would place the US and China at the summit of environmental policymaking.

Great power rivalry has intensified in the ‘post-post Cold War’ era, a race integral to the fracas over climate change. With Washington’s unipolar moment evaporating, there is a scramble for pole positions among states (and conglomerates like the EU). Economic growth, a key index of hard power, is imperative partly because large economies alone can support huge military machines. The rise of China, which forged ahead of Germany as the world’s third largest economy, is therefore worrisome for competitors like the EU, Japan and India, which risk being strategically left behind.

The deeper political anxiety driving these actors is that they might commit unilaterally or through treaties to cutting more carbon when the Chinese or the Americans could mutually settle for less. Should the EU or India tie their hands down by conceding major carbon reduction targets while China and the US pollute their way out of the economic depression with feeble commitments?

Even if consensus is achieved at Copenhagen, this dilemma will persist owing to possibilities of cheating by one or more signatories to a new climate treaty. The lack of reliable instruments to verify whether states honour their respective pledges on cutting carbon will stoke nervousness in countries trying to catch up with the current leaders in global hard power. Presentiment that China will extend its comparative advantage in economic competitiveness by skirting serious carbon emission restrictions should augur a rethink in New Delhi.  

A potential double whammy awaits India as it navigates the treacherous waters in the run-up to the Copenhagen conference. New Delhi could cede both hard and soft power to China if it does not engage with the US for some kind of ‘side payments’-based deal tying climate with, say, concessions on trade in agriculture.

In Secretary Clinton’s presence, Minister Ramesh raised alarm about carbon tariffs on Indian exports as a trade-distorting “threat”. Is there room for this threat to be converted into opportunity by actually reducing American tariff and subsidy barriers on Indian agricultural exports in return for India agreeing to some binding carbon cuts? 

India must throw creative ideas on the table to remain economically competitive vis-à-vis China while deflecting the stigma of being a spoiler of a global treaty to limit greenhouse gases. In a cutthroat world of power competition, India needs more sophisticated tools than sheer moral protestations that it is a minor per-capita emitter of carbon and hence exempt from mandatory cuts.