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Between a rock and a hard place: Unpacking India’s engagement inUNFCCC transparency arrangements

par Van Deursen, Max;Gupta, Aarti;Prasad, Sumit;Weikmans, Romain
Référence Climate Policy
Publication Publié, 2025-07-09

Article révisé par les pairs

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Résumé :

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) increasingly relies on elaborate transparency arrangements–in the form of regular reporting of information by countries and a review of that information. Despite the ubiquity of claims about the benefits of such transparency, few empirical studies have examined how engagement in climate transparency arrangements works in practice, domestically. This article examines the extent and nature of India’s engagement in UNFCCC transparency arrangements, by drawing on interviews, a focus group discussion and document analysis. This article proposes a typology of three diverse perspectives–ranging from ‘embracing’ to ‘strategic’ to ‘dismissive’–that shape and help to explain India’s engagement with global transparency obligations. The analysis shows how India’s engagement reflects a mix of all three. India has engaged extensively with UNFCCC transparency requirements, while seeking simultaneously to strategically align such engagement with domestic priorities, but has also openly questioned the utility of ever more detailed reporting. The typology presented here provides a novel perspective on explaining developing country engagement in global climate transparency arrangements, one that goes beyond explanations centred only on capacity or technical constraints. In doing so, it also highlights how a country like India finds itself between a rock and a hard place, as it struggles to shape engagement with multilateral transparency obligations in a manner that can but often may not align with domestic priorities.