Predicting Climate Policy Choices: The Indian Water Mission

Abstract

Harald Fuhr arrived to the University of Potsdam from the World Bank, steeped in perspectives of international public administration from the academic and the practical side alike – and thereby offered the Department of Political Science and Public Administration much appreciated complementary strengths far beyond the international relations field that he was charged to cover in its entirety. Given that various research institutes in Potsdam and Berlin have much to offer on environmental and especially climate policy research, Harald dedicated a substantial part of his research, teaching, publications, and mentoring to the climate policy field besides becoming one of the main promotors and later chairman of a doctoral training group on wicked problems – which naturally included the vexing issue of climate change at various levels of governance and a variety of regions. His contributions to the academic literature on climate policy focused on developing countries and emerging economies, the role of cities, public administrations, and sub-national as well as transnational processes (Fuhr/Lederer 2009; Fuhr et al. 2018; Hickmann et al. 2017; Fuhr et al. 2017; Fuhr/Hickmann 2016). Given Harald’s long-standing interests, our chapter will consist of climate policy questions at the subnational level in a pivotal emerging economy, India, a country that is likely to become the most populous country on planet Earth. The topic is ultimately about predicting the outcomes of policy negotiations, and Harald was a canny and very successful negotiator himself. India belongs to the core players of the international climate regime. Following the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, an international treaty mandated to chart the way for decades to come, the Paris Agreement essentially man-