Mainstreaming Mission LiFE Boosts India’s Negotiating Power At Climate Forums

Lifestyle for Environment, or Mission LiFE as it is called, is a formulation that India has been championing since at least the 2015 Paris climate change conference. Initially, it was used as a response to the growing pressure on India -- it had already emerged as the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases -- to do more on climate change. Prime Minister Narendra Modi argued that the Indian way of living was culturally inclined to be more respectful towards nature, was more frugal in its habits and less wasteful. He then pointed to the highly consumptive, and wasteful, practices in the developed countries, and linked it to higher emissions. In the early years, the idea did not receive much traction at the climate forums. But India seemed quite serious about it. And it slowly began doing things that it did not do very well previously -- put substance in its proposals.

Before 2015, India used to be largely reactive at the climate meetings. It was often left discussing and countering proposals put forward by others. Its own formulations, its own ideas, used to be missing. It was not at the forefront of setting the agenda, and was thus always hard-pressed to protect its interests. But this changed at the Paris conference. That year, India proposed and launched the International Solar Alliance (ISA), a global organisation to accelerate the deployment of solar energy across the world. This was a clear leadership initiative. India had worked out the details, managed the support of influential countries, and clearly thought out the roadmap.

ISA has now evolved into a full-fledged UN-recognised multilateral body, headquartered in New Delhi. A few years later, the ISA model was repeated with the Coalition of Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), another multilateral organisation, which is seeking to become a solutions centre and facilitator in climate-proofing critical infrastructure.

FLESHING IT OUT

Mission LiFE falls in a similar category, though there is no multilateral body to be formed here. It is meant to remain a campaign aiming to nudge public behaviour towards adopting more sustainable lifestyles. But to convince other countries, India needed to put flesh into the abstract-sounding idea, and that is what it did in the last few years. It defined the kind of lifestyle changes it was seeking -- waste reduction, plastic ban, sustainable food habits, energy savings, efficient use of water.

The push for millets, for example, is part of this same narrative. Millets are considered more eco-friendly to grow, more nutritious, more climate resilient. That they also make a lot of economic sense for India comes as an added advantage.

The G20 leaders’ dinner had a millet-rich menu. But the most important part of the narrative was to quantify the climate benefits of lifestyle and behavioural changes. That was necessary to make it into a compelling argument. This India managed to do last year by getting the International Energy Agency (IEA) to do a modelling exercise on these measures.

The IEA came out with a report that was revealing. It found that global adoption of these lifestyle changes could reduce more than two billion tonnes of emissions by 2030. It also estimated that LiFE measures could result in savings of about 440 billion USD for consumers around the world in 2030, which was equivalent to about five per cent spending on all fuels across the economy that year.

Significantly, that report also concluded that these benefits were not entirely dependent on the willingness of the people to make lifestyle adjustments. It said about 60 per cent of the estimated emissions reductions through LiFE measures could be mandated or influenced by governments, by putting in place favourable policies, incentives or infrastructure. Suddenly, Mission LiFE transformed from being just an abstract idea to a concrete roadmap to make important emission cuts.

NEXT STEPS

The inclusion of LiFE in the G20 declaration has fully mainstreamed India’s proposal. The next, expected, step would be to get this reflected in the decisions of the year-ending climate change conferences as well. The final outcomes from Glasgow and Sharm-el Shaikh already have mentions of sustainable lifestyles. This year’s Dubai meeting can possibly have an entire section devoted to this in its decisions. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is already on board, having launched the Mission LiFE initiative last year in India.

It is still debatable whether people on a mass scale, globally, would make meaningful lifestyle changes that would result in significant emission gains, that too over a relatively short period of time. Considering the urgency of the climate crisis, lifestyle changes over generations would be worthless. But that is not the point. By getting Mission LiFE formally accepted by the world, India, and many other developing countries, have gained an important negotiating tool. It is also a successful example of claiming leadership and setting the agenda at international forums.