India

Last updated: September 2024

The country is one of the priority countries with which the International Climate Initiative (IKI) maintains a particularly close cooperation.

With a population of more than 1.4 billion, India is a key partner country of the German International Climate Initiative (IKI). With its growing population, India plays a central role in solving global challenges, for example in climate change mitigation and in achieving the development goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.

It is also one of the so-called megadiverse countries and is known for its extremely high level of biodiversity, as well as being home to four of the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots. These biodiversity hotspots are defined as places where the biodiversity is particularly rich but, at the same time, severely threatened.

India submitted its first Nationally Determined Contribution ((I)NDC) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015 and updated it in 2022. It includes, among others, the following targets:

to cover 50 per cent of energy consumption with renewable sources of energy by 2030;

to reduce the carbon intensity of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 45 per cent by 2030;

to create additional carbon sinks (2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent) through additional forests and tree cover by 2030; and

to promote sustainable and healthy lifestyles through the mass movement “LiFE – Lifestyle for Environment”, among other initiatives.

These targets are also a step towards achieving India’s long-term goal of becoming climate neutral by 2070.

India also signed the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

The Biological Diversity Act to meet the objectives of the CBD was enacted in 2002 and amended in 2023. It aims to conserve biological diversity and ensure the sustainable use of biodiversity as well as a fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from it.

India is currently working on updating its National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) to implement the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which was adopted at the fifteenth CBD Conference of the Parties (COP 15) at the end of 2022.
The focus of the cooperation with India is the IKI funding area mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. Several IKI projects are working on the topics of renewable sources of energy, sustainable mobility and logistics, as well as climate policy. Another area of focus is preserving carbon sinks and biodiversity, especially wetlands.

For example, as part of the IKI country call 2019 with India, projects focusing on storage technologies for renewable sources of energy and on the restoration of forest landscapes were chosen.
Indo-German cooperation
There are well established dialogue formats that play an important role in the regular bilateral political talks between India and Germany. One of these is the Indo-German Environment Forum, which includes various topic-specific working groups (climate, water, waste, urban areas, biodiversity).

In February 2021, for example, the second meeting of the Indo-German Joint Working Group on Biodiversity took place, during which the Indian National Biodiversity Authority presented several project ideas. As a result, an IKI project was set up to support the development and use of electronic registers to document biodiversity and biodiversity-related knowledge.

Interface project

Most priority countries of the IKI also engage in so-called IKI interface projects, which have permanent project offices in the capital city of the respective country. Alongside their own, country-specific project commission, these interface projects are also tasked with maintaining close contact to environment and climate ministries as well as networking with other relevant ministries in the field of climate and biodiversity policy. Beyond this, the interface projects also work to network all of the IKI projects in the country and region together so as to promote synergies.

In India, the interface function is currently represented by the Indo-German Support project for Climate Action in India.

Project priorities

The development and use of methods to measure the additional climate benefits from development programmes by the Indian government that do not have a specific climate focus;
Promotion of cooperation between the public and private sectors to support the transition to a low-carbon economy;
Function as an IKI interface: Promotion of dialogue on climate and biodiversity between the IKI projects in the country as well as between other actors (networking opportunities and knowledge management).

Project contact

iki_india(at)giz.de

Link to project page

Website IKI India

Insights into the project work

All projects in the country

In a nutshell

Region: South Asia

Population: 1.43 billion (World Bank, 2023)

CO₂eq emissions (incl. LUCF): 3.420 billion t (3rd rank of global top emitters) (ClimateWatch, 2021)

CO₂eq emissions per capita (incl. LUCF): 2.4 t (ClimateWatch, 2021)

Total energy supply (IRENA, 2021):

23 % RE (88 % Bioenergy - 6 % Hydro/marine - 3 % Wind - 3 % Solar)
23 % Oil
6 % Gas
1 % Nuclear
47 % Coal + others

IKI projects in the country (last updated in June 2024)

bilateral: 13 ongoing, 25 completed
regional: 4 ongoing, 5 completed
global: 13 ongoing, 39 completed

ClimateWatch

NDC partnership: country page

IKI partner ministries:

Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC)
Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA)
Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI)
Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST)
Ministry of Power (MoP)
Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE)

The IKI Strategy

The IKI wants to maximise its impact on climate action and biodiversity conservation. To this end, it concentrates its funding activities on prioritised fields of action within the four funding areas. Another key element is the close cooperation with selected partner countries, especially with the IKI’s priority countries.

Click here for the IKI Strategy