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Using policy cycle model as a heuristic, this article studies Indian, Brazilian, and South African engagement with Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) by (a) comparing NAMA policy process and (b) identifying factors driving or limiting the framework’s domestic application. India largely remained uninterested in NAMAs, Brazil aligned its domestic climate policy and NAMAs, while South Africa had a more nuanced engagement when formulating NAMAs. Four factors influenced these countries’ NAMA engagements: the level and necessity of international support, the availability of domestic policy provisions to tackle climate change, the domestic institutional capacity to coordinate interministerial functioning, and the role of individuals in the institutional apparatus. As an international climate policy framework, studying NAMA engagement provides learnings for nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement for designing the instrument, ensuring clarity on support provisions for ratcheting up ambitions, and enhancing institutional capacity, to expedite transition from policy formulation to implementation and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public participation in environmental decision making is promoted in the Global South as a core tenet of “good governance” associated with sustainability. This emphasis on participatory governance has produced significant attention to the importance of “environmental awareness” as a precondition of participation in environmental governance. This article analyzes the connected discourses surrounding environmental awareness and participation in Indian water-quality policy, focusing on North India’s Ganges River. Drawing on evidence from policy documents and interviews with government officials and other key informants, it argues that the emphasis on environmental awareness as a precondition of participation has allowed the state to effectively forestall participation, to approach awareness raising as a consensus-building activity, and to effectively rollback the regulation of polluting industries. Moreover, conditional participation has increased opportunities for state agencies to control the conditions and terms of “awareness,” contributing to the effacement of alternative environmental knowledges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Powerful political actors in the international system quite frequently adopt unilateral policies whose implications extend beyond their respective borders. Examples include financial market regulation as well as taxation, trade and environmental policies. They do so to avoid lowest common-denominator outcomes in areas where they desire more ambitious international policies, and to motivate or coerce other countries to shoulder a part of the burden associated with problem solving. This article explores whether and how such unilateralism affects public opinion in other countries, arguing that such analysis can point to external constraints on unilateralism and is worthwhile also for normative reasons. Empirically, we examine the effect of a major unilateral European Union (EU) climate policy initiative, which regulates emissions from aircraft, on public opinion in India and the United States, the two largest democracies outside the EU. Based on survey experiments, we study the effects of cost and sovereignty considerations on people’s evaluation of the EU’s new policy. The results show that both types of concern play a significant role and may act as a constraint on unilateral European climate policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This exploratory study is an attempt to appraise concern for environmental pollution in India, in a local context. Taking into account a possible East-West difference in conceptualizing environmental concern, it attempts to understand the role of different sociodemographic variables in predicting 'environmental concern' in an Indian context. The much exercised HEP-NEP distinction developed in the West seems inappropriate in the Indian context due to wide differences in traditions and the dominant worldviews. Collecting data from a purposive household survey of 375 respondents, an understanding of major sociodemographic determinants of environmental concern using correlation and multivariate regression analysis has been attempted. The findings are also compared with results from other studies in the West on the whole along with the Health of the Planet (HOP) Survey, 1993 findings on 'Willingness to Pay' for India, in particular. The study exhibits a significant positive association of environmental concern with residence, education and income, supporting social class analysis based on a postmaterialism thesis. While age fails to show any significant influence, 'caste', a traditional Indian institution, reflects a positive association supporting the elitist bias hypothesis of environmental concern. The study emphasizes the need for further empirical explorations in this regard in order to examine environmental concern in India in a more effective way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the growing field of urban political ecology, so far not much attention has been paid to air-quality and related policies. In this paper I examine the recent far-reaching air-pollution policies in India's capital, as well as the role of environmental nongovernmental organizations and judicial activism, in view of their implications for different groups of the urban population. I analyze these policies in the wider context of Delhi's ongoing strive for ‘city beautification’ and for changing (environmental) governmentalities, and reveal a marked middle-class bias in the environmental and judicial activisms practised, which also contributes to the refining of the boundary between public and private environments. Furthermore, it is argued that air quality with its complex sociospatial patterns plays a significant part in the coproduction of urban ‘socioenvironments’ that needs to be addressed in political-ecological studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the challenges to effective environmental protection in the power sectors of China and India. Its analytical framework consists of identification of environmental policies and regulations affecting electricity generation, assessment of problems faced when implementing these policies and regulations, and finally recommendations for surmounting the barriers encountered. Environmental issues in the electricity sector have been addressed directly, through laws and governmental orders, and indirectly, through policies on alternative technologies and efficiency improvement. However, successful environmental regulation has been hampered in these large developing countries by the compelling need for energy and the consequent rapid increase in electricity generation. Solutions to these problems lie in combinations of cleaner and more-efficient generation, appropriate control equipment, and more-efficient end-use devices. Among factors that facilitate effective adoption of these solutions are state prioritization, fiscal and financial incentives, appropriate technological choices, institutional involvement, integrated planning, public participation, and international commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an assessment of the impact of environmental movements in India. Such movements disclose the suffering of India from the deficiency of a consistent national environmental policy that creates a logical and administrative breach. Urgent stoppage of felling of trees and the security of all non-agricultural lands are some measures suggested for priority action.

The unplanned sector of India's capital city has an enormous backlog in the provision of reliable water supplies to its population, which is flirt her exacerbated by the growing number of informal urban settlements. In this context, contingent valuation method (CVM) is applied to evaluate a policy of providing better water supply with improved quality and reliability in unplanned settlements of Delhi. Willingness to pay (WTP) questions are used to value a specific outcome of a policy intended to assure a reliable water supply that has no health risk of contamination. The estimation from linear utility models assert that the proposed changes would provide positive net benefits to customers who are otherwise incurring considerable amounts of "coping cost" in the absence ofa reliable water supply. The findings have important policy implications for gauging public support for water supply improvements in infrastructurally disadvantaged households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]