Capacity building for proportionate climate policy: Lessons from India and South Africa
| Author | Ganesh Gorti,Prabhat Upadhyaya,Manish Kumar Shrivastava,Saliem Fakir |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512120963883 |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512120963883
International Political Science Review
2021, Vol. 42(1) 130 –145
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512120963883
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Capacity building for proportionate
climate policy: Lessons from India
and South Africa
Prabhat Upadhyaya
World Wide Fund for Nature – South Africa, South Africa
Manish Kumar Shrivastava
TERI School of Advanced Studies, India
Ganesh Gorti
University of Colorado, USA
Saliem Fakir
African Climate Foundation, South Africa
Abstract
Countries must develop their capacity to credibly revise their nationally determined contributions (NDCs)
proportionate to the global climate goal. This paper argues that long-lasting capacity is necessarily embedded
in the institutions governing cooperation between state and non-state actors. This institutional capacity for
cooperation is determined by the two interactive processes of conception and calibration, where the state
plays a definitive role in mediating between competing interests. In conception, the state uses its discretionary
power to set the long-term vision, whereas during calibration it exercises flexibility to accommodate concerns
and capacity of other actors. We conclude that proportionality of policy response is better understood, and
achieved, through the convergence of both these processes. Drawing on climate policy experiences of India
and South Africa, we recommend that successful implementation and enhancement of NDCs would require
a greater emphasis on capacity building for calibration in developing countries.
Keywords
Implementation, capacity building, climate ambition, India, South Africa, proportionality
Corresponding author:
Manish Kumar Shrivastava, Department of Energy and Environment, TERI School of Advanced Studies, 10, Institutional
Area, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi 110070, India.
Email: manish.shrivastava@terisas.ac.in
963883IPS0010.1177/0192512120963883International Political Science ReviewUpadhyaya et al.
research-article2020
Special Issue Article
Upadhyaya et al. 131
Introduction
The efficacy of the Paris Agreement hinges upon the ability of participating countries to implement
and enhance their nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Disproportionality of current
NDCs to deliver the goal of restricting temperature rise to 2°C is widely accepted (Höhne et al.,
2020). Countries need to undertake a dynamic, long-term approach for effective NDC implementa-
tion and enhance ambition commensurate with science (IPCC, 2018). However, lack of necessary
details on how countries will implement their respective NDCs introduces ambiguity and specula-
tion about their ability to ‘update and enhance’ NDC ambitions.
The lack of capacity is an established challenge for implementation (IPCC, 2018).
Disproportionate national capacity, particularly in the developing country context, is one of the
main reasons these countries have been hesitant to take up mitigation commitments (Dubash and
Morgan, 2013; Mathur and Shrivastava, 2015; Okubo and Michaelowa, 2010). While NDCs mark
a departure from this historical position, unevenly institutionalized capacity (Purdon, 2015) along
with the barriers created by domestic politics (Upadhyaya et al., 2018) cast doubt on their ability
to effectively implement and continuously enhance their NDCs.
This paper proposes a framework to better understand the interaction between the imperatives
of capacity building and the barriers posed by domestic politics as a determinant of (dis)propor-
tionate policy response. We use the evolution of climate policy in India and South Africa1 to illus-
trate the usefulness of the proposed framework.
The paper is structured as follows. We first elaborate on the proposed framework and describe
the methodology adopted. We later illustrate the South African and Indian experiences, respec-
tively, drawing on the proposed framework, and subsequently extend it to highlight insights into
how capacity building should be approached, in the context of progressive revision of NDCs.
Implementation, capacity building and domestic politics
Defining an appropriate policy goal and designing a commensurate, robust implementation strat-
egy are intertwined processes. The outcome of each of these processes may turn out to be dispro-
portionate to the scale and severity of the problem the policy intends to address (Maor et al., 2017,
Peters et al., 2017).2 The literature attributes the degree of disproportionality of the policy goal
mostly to the influence of the political actors (Peters et al., 2017). However, it is possible that dif-
ferent actors, driven by self-interest, perceive scale and severity of the problem, and hence propor-
tionality of policy response, differently. Divergence in roles and agency of organizations involved
in actual implementation could also lead to disproportionality in implementation. Accordingly, it is
possible that the policy goal is considered proportionate, but its implementation is perceived as
disproportionate, and vice versa. Nevertheless, both avenues of disproportionality in policy
response are embedded in institutional capacity.
Scholars argue that institutional capacity3 is entrenched within the political actors represented by
the state and manifests itself as the state’s ability to define, implement and evaluate policy (Braithwaite,
2006; Estache and Wren-Lewis, 2009). Dubash and Morgan (2013) suggest a further contrast between
‘thin’ and ‘thick’ state capacity. The former refers to a narrow, structural view of the state with a focus
on institutional design, whereas the latter implies simultaneous engagement with state and non-state
actors while sticking to the procedure, independence and reasoning. However, state capacity is not a
static or binary construct. Over time, states can be predatory, developmental, or ‘in between’, that is,
they can destroy, nourish or construct state capacity (Evans, 1995).
Normatively, effective implementation should ‘nourish’ and ‘construct’ capacity to implement.
However, a state’s capability to ‘adjust or re-calibrate’ policy responses (Peters et al., 2017) is also
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