India’s Role in Climate and Sustainability Diplomacy
India has emerged as an indispensable force in global climate politics. The need for green transition is uniting the world in ambition, yet dividing it in execution. Climate diplomacy today extends beyond the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), finding new expressions in the linkages between trade, climate change, and sustainability in multiple forums, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), FAO, OECD. Agriculture lies at the centre of this intersection. Emerging green tensions appear both in the WTO negotiations, where agriculture subsidy reform is being linked with environmental sustainability, and through unilateral measures such as the European Union’s Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which are reshaping agricultural trade. For India, the question is not whether to reform, but how to ensure that sustainability does not translate into new structural inequities and advances in a fair and development-oriented manner.
According to FAO, sustainability requires environmental protection, economic viability, and social equity to ensure that agriculture meets present needs without compromising future generations. While countries differ in how they define and prioritise these dimensions, India’s approach seeks to ensure that environmental ambition advances in tandem with equity and policy space for development. This approach shapes negotiations across various platforms, consistently advocating for Special and Differential Treatment (S&DT) for developing countries at the WTO and Common but Differentiated Responsibilities with Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC) at the UNFCCC COP, principles characterising India’s climate diplomacy.
Hence, the central tension remains not whether the green transition should proceed, but how it can do so without widening disparities in agriculture, the sector most exposed to climate change, particularly in developing countries where millions of low-income or resource-poor farmers depend on it.
WTO Agriculture Negotiations
The WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) provides a basic framework for how governments can support their farmers while keeping trade fair. The members’ domestic support measures are classified into different “boxes” according to their degree of trade distortion. Subsidies with minimal or no trade-distorting impact, such as those for research or environmental programmes, fall under the Green Box and face no financial limits. Support that restricts production, like payments to farmers for reducing output, belongs to the Blue Box. The Development Box (Article 6.2) provides S&DT for developing countries, including Least Developed Countries (LDC), which allows input and investment subsidies to be provided to low-income or resource-poor farmers, without any financial limit.
Under the Amber box, most developing countries can provide support only upto 10 percent of their value of production, and developed upto 5 percent. 33 countries, mainly developed ones such as the US, EU, and Canada, enjoy additional entitlements that let them provide subsidies well above the usual limits set for other members.
A new narrative has entered the WTO, led by members of the Cairns Group, including Australia, Canada, Brazil, and New Zealand, aiming to halve global trade-distorting subsidies by 2030 and repurpose them toward environmentally friendly support. However, this apparently neutral approach conceals deep asymmetries. India advocates that such an approach ignores existing inequities in the AoA framework. While developed members would retain substantial flexibility under their additional entitlements, developing countries whose farmers are largely low-income or resource-poor would see their policy space shrink by nearly 80%. Proponents argue this will incentivise a shift toward the Green Box, but its provisions, designed almost 30 years ago, remain misaligned with the socio-economic realities of developing including LDCs.
India has been a strong advocate for S&DT at the WTO, spearheading that these sustainability-linked disciplines could inadvertently penalise the farmers.
Unilateral Trade Measures
The EUDR represents a unilateral approach with extraterritorial implications for agricultural producers worldwide. It requires commodities like coffee, cocoa, soy, palm oil, rubber, timber, and cattle, sold in the EU market, to be certified as “deforestation-free”. While the regulation aims to achieve environmental objectives, for countries to access the EU market, it would require compliance with requirements such as traceability up to the farm level and a rigorous due diligence system. For many smallholder farmers and producers in developing countries who lack access to digital tracking tools, finance, or certification mechanisms, in practice, they could be excluded from global value chains not because their products cause deforestation, but due to the difficulty in meeting these requirements.
For India, whose exports worth around USD 3 billion (2024) to the EU could be affected, this measure carries serious implications. India and other developing countries argue, the green transition risks turning into a form of “green protectionism” where advanced economies use environmental standards in trade measures having extraterritorial implications, deepening inequality rather than solving it, thereby undermining socio-economic dimensions of sustainability. India, together with other members of the BASIC group, China, Brazil, and South Africa, has consistently opposed unilateral trade measures at the UNFCCC COP. India has also raised concerns that such measures undermine the principles of CBDR-RC at various WTO committees. India has underscored the need for mutual recognition of domestic environmental efforts, capacity-building support, and transparent consultation processes before implementing such measures.
Amid these green tensions, India continues to demonstrate leadership in global environmental governance through a solution-oriented approach. From the International Solar Alliance, launched by India and France, driving solar deployment across 120+ countries, to Mission LiFE, which reframes climate action as a shift in everyday behaviour and resource use. In agriculture, the Natural Farming Mission and the Millets Mission offer climate-resilient models rooted in farmers’ welfare and equity. Through such initiatives, India demonstrates that it is an active contributor to climate innovation and partnership.
Looking Ahead
The discussions at various multilateral and regional forums should help redefine sustainability not as a constraint, but as a bridge between climate action and development needs. India’s leadership, principled, pragmatic, and rooted in fairness, will remain essential in shaping that outcome.
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