India-Japan Policy Research Workshop on "How to enhance climate actions to meet a long-term goal"

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment, Japan organized a two day climate policy research workshop on September 29-30, 2015 at Maple Hall, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. This workshop discussed the effect of submitted INDCs by major economies, their current policy frameworks, experience with international cooperation in India, key issues in negotiations for Paris COP and the role of research community in better informing climate policy. The workshop highlighted that countries are focusing on reducing energy intensity of GDP and emission intensity of electricity supply as the major thrust for meeting the 2 degree goal. There are multiple successful experiences on North-South and South-South technology transfer, but how those experiences and experiments could be scaled up remains an open discourse, critical for climate policy. The role of international cooperation and various mechanisms in creating market dynamism that will make the private sector to transfer and aggressively diffuse climate technologies will be crucial. The key challenge before the Paris COP will be to deliver a long-term sustainable action oriented agreement. In addition to deciding on the architecture of technology cooperation and mechanisms, the Paris COP will have the challenge of finding an agreeable arrangement for the cycle of review and revision of ambition of INDCs. To this end, the research community has an important role in developing a meta-narrative for policy making which includes and connects multiple strands of policy analysis and problem-framing.