Puzzling dichotomy: India’s climate debate must not be framed as mitigation versus adaptation

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Chapter 10 of India’s Economic Survey 2025-26 provides a comprehensive summary of New Delhi’s climate and related initiatives.

It helps the reader understand the catch-all nature of climate actions; between mitigation, adaptation and resilience-building measures, every aspect of a country’s economy must reflect climate considerations and the fact that India recognizes them is clear. However, while India could soon be among the world’s four largest national economies, it is the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

It is expected that India would become the third-largest economy by 2030 and the second-largest emitter by around 2035. Given its economic size and the rise in extreme events globally as a result of rapidly deteriorating climate conditions, India cannot responsibly de-prioritize mitigation efforts and postulate all developmental initiatives as ‘climate adaptation’ efforts.

The fact that adaptation and resilience-building need to go together with mitigation was accepted by the global climate community at least a few decades ago—with the sharp cautionary note that as mitigation fails, adaptation efforts would likely fail faster. As such, the survey’s contention that “scarce fiscal resources should not be diverted away from health, agriculture and poverty reduction merely to accelerate near-term mitigation milestones" seems to reflect an inadequate grasp of the subject.

Near-term mitigation measures are unarguably crucial to limit the intensity of adverse climate outcomes and must not be seen as taking away from development in any way. Just as we prioritize industrialization as a mantra for economic growth, mitigation is more efficient than adaptation as a focus of