India is the 7th largest country by area, and the second most populated country in the world with over 1.2 billion people. The Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea surround the southern majority of the country. In 2017, the Indian economy was the world’s sixth largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity.

EMISSIONS

The average carbon emissions per capita is .72 metrics tons. India’s carbon emissions rose 5% in 2016 alone.

 CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS

India is embarking on one of the fastest rural-to-urban transitions in human history, with 200 million more city dwellers expected by 2030, all using new buildings, roads and cars. Lord Nicholas Stern, the climate economist who has worked in India for 40 years, says a polluting, high-carbon development would leave India alone accounting for a huge chunk of the world’s future emissions, making it “very difficult” to keep the global temperature rise below the internationally agreed danger limit of 2ºC.

But India’s vast population means that even small increases in emissions per person add up to a huge amount of carbon dioxide and India is likely to become the world’s biggest polluter. “The sheer numbers of the population multiplied by anything makes it a big number – that is India’s reality,” says Samir Saran, at the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi.

There are signs of hope, however, driven by astonishing drops in the price of renewable energy in the last few years. Costs are falling faster than anyone predicted, with new record-low prices set this year for solar and wind. State governments can now pay less for clean energy than they pay for new coal power.

Unchecked global warming will hit India hard, increasing extreme weather, like the floods that killed thousands in August, and affecting the monsoon upon which India’s farmers depend.

Heatwaves already cause thousands of deaths in India and rising temperatures that make outdoor work impossible have already seen the labour equivalent to about half a million people lost since 2000. But in coming decades, heatwaves could reach a level of humid heat classed as posing “extreme danger” for three-quarters of the population.

Serious obstacles remain though with the country’s coal-fired power industry currently forced to slow its operations due to a surplus of electricity in the market. “These guys are hurting,” Mathur says, and that has knock-on effects for India’s slowing economy. “They have taken loans, and they can’t sell electricity, so they can’t repay the loans. And if they can’t repay the banks, the banks have no money to lend for more growth.” Recent months have seen a backlash against renewables, with intensified lobbying for coal due to this reason.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP

The whole world would benefit from a clean, green India and can help make it happen, says Stern, by bringing down the interest rates on the loans used to fund the low carbon transition: “The best thing the world could do is help bring down the cost of capital.” That means long term finance and help to cut project risks.

Many ways to help include donating to a variety of these environmental organizations to help India with their push for cleaner energy and lower emissions.

India is doing what it can to lower their emissions and improve their air quality, including planting 66 million trees in 12 hours, following through on their part of the Paris Climate Agreement. Grow Trees is an organization that plants millions of trees across India, and you can donate money to help pay for the saplings.

Around the 5 minute mark of this video, Anab Jain starts talking about air pollution in India and what it would turn into in 2030 if the country’s emission habits were to not change.