Description
How China and India address the issue of climate change and GHG mitigation will have a significant bearing on the future of the planet, given their economic and demographic weights. However, despite having shared circumstances and interests on climate change, their cooperative endeavours have remained chequered at best, subservient to dominant geopolitical priorities. This is primarily because the China-India climate diplomacy is situated within the traditional international relations paradigm, shaped and constrained by considerations of relative gains and strategic advantages.
Adopting the constructivist approach, this paper contends that an enduring climate cooperation between China and India is possible only through a discursive reconstruction of the climate question as an existential and collective threat that transcends zero-sum geopolitical confines. Through qualitative discourse analysis of policy documents, diplomatic statements, and joint communiqués, the paper explores how such reframing could foster new norms of resilient bilateral climate cooperation.
The paper argues that China and India must draw from their heritage as civilisational states in their neighbourly engagements, shedding the limitations of the Westphalian sensibilities. Climate change must therefore be reframed as a 'civilisational threat' that imperils not only their socio-economic and ecological futures, but their cultural heritage, knowledge and value systems, and worldviews. Such a reconstruction of the climate question will elevate the climate agenda above everyday geopolitics, justifying and necessitating closer cooperation that endures geopolitical whims. Finally, founded on this reconstructed understanding of climate change, the paper formulates a resilient climate cooperation framework designed to institutionalise lasting and effective political, economic, and technological cooperation between China and India.
