India’s recently withdrew its bid to host COP33, offering no public explanation beyond a vague reference to a “review of commitments”. The Conference of Parties (COP) is the supreme annual decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that nearly 200 nations are signatories to.
The move reverses a pledge Prime Minister Narendra Modi made at the Dubai summit in 2023 and abandons India’s stated ambition to lead the Global South on climate diplomacy. The timing could not be worse — at a moment when American climate leadership has effectively collapsed — India is one of the few large economies capable of anchoring global climate ambition.
The decision reflects the familiar anxiety that serious climate commitment comes at the cost of economic growth, and this indeed a valid concern. However, it is a concern worth examining carefully, because the arithmetic turns out to be unfounded.
India now accounts for roughly 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, making it the world’s third-largest emitter, after China and the United States. Its per capita emissions remain the lowest in the G20 — only an eighth of what the average American produces — and its historical contribution to cumulative atmospheric carbon is just 3%. India clearly did not cause the climate problem. However, as a largely sub-tropical country, with a significant chunk of the population dependent on agriculture, its stakes in the outcome are arguably bigger than any other country in the world.
Heat extremes are intensifying across the country causing unbearable summers and cycles of floods and droughts. The people most exposed are smallholder farmers, daily wage labourers, and the rural poor — precisely the populations whose welfare India’s development agenda depends on.
Also, the retreat of Himalayan glaciers that feed the Ganga and the Brahmaputra could choke the water-flow that millions of farmers depend on. More than half of India’s population depends on agriculture for its livelihood, and small and marginal farmers account for over 85% of the farming population. These households carry no crop insurance, have no savings buffer, and no meaningful recourse when the monsoon fails or the heat arrives three weeks early. According to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, without adaptation measures, rain-fed rice yields could fall by 20% by 2050 and nearly 50% by 2080, while wheat yields are projected to decline by roughly 19% at mid-century and 40% by the end of it. Between 2015 and 2021 alone, the country lost nearly 70 million hectares of crops to excess rain and drought combined. One macroeconomic estimate puts the cost of unchecked heat at 2.8% of GDP by 2050, rising to 8.7% by 2100, with 45 million people potentially displaced from their homes by mid-century. For the rural poor, climate is a slow-moving catastrophe with a very clear trajectory.
The growth-versus-climate framing is further undermined by what India spends to sustain its fossil fuel dependence. India’s crude oil import bill reached roughly $137 billion in FY2025, with more than 85% of consumption imported — making the economy acutely vulnerable to price shocks set in Riyadh, Moscow, and Washington. The bill could exceed $200 billion in the coming year with the ongoing Israel-US attack on Iran. Every geopolitical disruption in the Gulf sends tremors through Indian inflation, the rupee, and the current account, and creates uncertainty and instability in the Indian economy.
The current instability of global oil markets makes this precisely the moment to lean into the energy transition rather than away from it. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that electric vehicles and energy efficiency improvements combined will avoid nearly half a million barrels per day of additional oil demand between now and 2030. A serious push on electric vehicles including on India’s entire bus fleet could save $14 billion annually in oil imports while cutting transport sector emissions significantly. Over the longer horizon, a sustained clean energy transition would reduce India’s oil import bill by $1.4 trillion through 2040 — savings that would entirely offset the costs of the clean energy investments required.
India’s renewable record, meanwhile, makes for a compelling success story in carbon mitigation. The country has already reached roughly 50% of its installed electricity capacity from non-fossil fuel sources, a full five years ahead of its Paris Agreement commitment. Solar capacity has expanded forty-fole over the past decade. The International Solar Alliance was India’s own institutional creation. India could have hosted COP33 and led from genuine credibility and a track record of leadership.
Admittedly, India’s reliance on coal remains an important sticking point. India’s power sector depends on domestic coal for grid stability and fuel security, and asking India to abandon it keeping to a Western timetable is neither equitable nor realistic. But coal’s role in baseload generation does not foreclose aggressive action in other sectors. Climate action in the transport sector, industry, buildings, and demand-side efficiency offer large near-term gains that require no dismantling of the coal-based agenda that is India’s only energy buffer, and reduces the import bill. All this, while also reducing air pollution — a catastrophe every winter across the Gangetic plain.
The final argument is geopolitical. The global climate regime is held together partly by the credibility of large developing nations choosing to act despite limited historical responsibility. When India signals disengagement, it provides cover for smaller countries like Brazil, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Indonesia, each carrying their own coal dependencies and growth imperatives, to also cut back on their climate commitment — to India’s detriment over the long term.
India has earned the right to make demands of the international climate finance system, and has the right to insist on equity. But it should not mistake withdrawal from hosting for neutrality. COP33 was a chance to shape the agenda, leverage the moment, and make the case with data, with its own renewable record, and with the earned leadership of a country that has contributed little to cumulative warming and stands to lose enormously from it. Even if India is not going to host COP33, we should engage actively to shape an agenda that the lives 1.4 billion people will be affected by.
Ramanan Laxminarayan is president, One Health Trust. The views expressed are personal
