India’s presidency of the G20 for 2023 has been hailed with much fanfare and national pride in India. It has the platform and the responsibility to direct the collective energies of the group towards not only addressing the climate crisis but also potentially reshape the ideological contours of international climate politics.

That India is a key actor at the international climate negotiation table was well displayed at the recently concluded Convention of Parties (COP) 27 at Sharm El-Sheikh. The summit which sought a renewed solidarity among the parties to achieve the promises made at Paris in 2015 saw India being an assertive yet cooperative party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Civil societies are key actors in the fight against climate change. They provide a fillip where state agencies and intergovernmental processes lag and have the potential to hold these actors accountable in the fight against climate change. The People’s Republic of China, despite all its trappings of being a communist authoritarian state, has allowed a considerable yet well-defined space for environmental civil society organisations, including those working on climate change.

There is no doubt that climate change needs to be addressed by all countries in a concerted manner. The fact remains, however, that there is a wide variance among countries both in terms of capacity to address and culpability for the problem. Developing and least developed countries are likely to suffer disproportionately the effects of climate change.

Climate change is bound to have far-reaching implications on tribal societies even though they have traditionally lived in close harmony with nature. For them, climate change is an issue of human rights and equity as it threatens to disrupt their traditional ways of life and production through land degradation, agricultural shifts, changes in rainfall patterns, higher incidence of pests and diseases.

India witnessed two devastating cyclones, Tauktae and Yaas, hitting west and east coasts within a span of two weeks in May 2021. Such extreme weather events impact the lives of millions, both immediately and long after they have passed. The calamities occurred simultaneously as the second phase of the Covid-19 pandemic was claiming lives in the thousands daily. The cyclones and the pandemic together presented an ominous future of an unmitigated climate change.