New Delhi : A report by the Centre for Financial Accountability has found that India’s Parliament asked 8,702 questions on climate and environmental issues over the decade since the Paris Agreement, but climate change accounted for only 3.3% of all parliamentary questions, while climate finance received just 23 questions.
India’s Parliament has paid limited attention to the climate crisis in the decade since the Paris Agreement, with most questions focused on clean energy and far fewer on climate finance and global climate policy, the report found. The study examined 1,254 parliamentary debates and proceedings during the period.
The report was released in New Delhi last week in the presence of former Environment Minister and Congress MP Jairam Ramesh, climate expert Soumya Dutta, environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta and Maadhyam’s Maansi Verma.
Speaking at the launch, Jairam Ramesh said that although concern about the environment and climate is greater today than it was a decade ago, there has not been a corresponding increase in parliamentary debate on the issue.
“Today’s climate champions were yesterday’s climate sceptics and deniers,” he said.
According to the report, climate-related questions accounted for only 3.3% of all parliamentary questions asked during the decade under review.
The largest share of climate-related parliamentary questions concerned clean energy and decarbonisation, which accounted for 2,938 questions, or 33.81% of the report’s dataset. This was followed by forests and land use, with 1,461 questions, and extreme weather and natural disasters, with 1,385.
In contrast, climate finance and markets received only 23 questions, accounting for 0.26% of the climate-related dataset. Global climate governance received 105 questions, or 1.21%.
The report said this imbalance reflects a parliamentary focus on visible energy-transition targets and technologies, while the financial and institutional architecture required to implement climate action remains comparatively under-scrutinised.
Climate debate often follows disasters:
The study also found that parliamentary attention to climate-related issues has often been reactive rather than strategic.
The February 2021 Uttarakhand glacier burst was followed by a rise in parliamentary questions on glacier melt and cloudbursts. Similarly, the record-breaking heat of 2022 prompted the first substantial parliamentary focus on heatwaves, which the report identifies as a major blind spot in earlier parliamentary discourse.
The report argues that these patterns indicate that Parliament frequently responds to major climate-related disasters after they occur rather than maintaining sustained scrutiny of long-term preparedness and adaptation.
This comes as India remains highly exposed to extreme weather events. The report cites Ministry of Home Affairs data showing that between 2020 and 2025, nearly 11,000 people died and nearly 27 lakh houses were damaged in hydro-meteorological disasters, while more than 153 lakh hectares of land were affected.
The report also points to the Climate Risk Index 2026, which ranked India among the ten countries most affected by extreme weather events between 1995 and 2024.
Ruling and opposition MPs raise different concerns:
Members of the ruling NDA were found to predominantly ask status-oriented questions that allowed the government to highlight flagship programmes and provide updates on initiatives such as PM-KUSUM and the National Green Hydrogen Mission.
Opposition MPs, meanwhile, were more likely to question implementation gaps, funding shortages and the effectiveness of government policies.
In the clean energy sector, for example, the report found that ruling-party MPs frequently highlighted India’s renewable-energy expansion, the International Solar Alliance, green hydrogen and targets under India’s climate commitments.
Opposition MPs more often raised concerns about stranded renewable capacity, rooftop solar adoption, the environmental costs of renewable infrastructure and the absence of a policy for a “just energy transition” for workers and regions dependent on coal.
The report noted that parliamentary questions rarely treat climate change as an isolated environmental issue. Instead, MPs frequently connect it with farmer distress, public health, energy security and other developmental concerns.
Climate finance remains a major blind spot:
One of the sharpest findings concerns the limited parliamentary attention to climate finance.
Only 23 questions over the decade were classified under climate finance and markets. This represents just 0.26% of climate-related questions and 0.009% of all parliamentary questions examined.
The report notes that this is particularly significant given the estimated scale of financing required for India’s climate action. While Parliament has discussed international commitments by developed countries to provide climate finance, there has been comparatively little scrutiny of the domestic financial architecture required to fund India’s own mitigation and adaptation efforts.
Questions on carbon markets, green bonds, carbon-border measures and other financial mechanisms also remained limited.
The report argues that Parliament has focused more heavily on the physical targets of the energy transition than on the question of how that transition will be financed.
Adaptation and accountability gaps:
The report also raises concerns over the weakening of institutional attention to adaptation.
The National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change, once intended to support vulnerable sectors such as agriculture, was reclassified as a “non-scheme” expenditure from the financial year 2023–24, with no new projects to be initiated under it.
At the same time, the report identifies gaps in government data on several climate-related impacts.
It says the government has stated that it does not centrally maintain data on issues including climate-induced migration, heatwave deaths among informal workers and the precise extent of forest destruction caused by wildfires.
The study describes this absence of data as a barrier to effective parliamentary scrutiny, since MPs cannot adequately assess the scale of a problem or the effectiveness of government interventions without reliable information.
The report also highlights what it calls a gap between technological monitoring and actual preparedness. Government initiatives such as the Flood Watch India app and the Van Agni portal are cited as examples of technological responses, while the Ministry has acknowledged the absence of nationally benchmarked firefighting systems despite the use of satellite technology to track forest fires.
Renewable expansion, but persistent structural problems:
The report does not dismiss India’s progress on renewable energy.
It notes that India achieved 50% non-fossil installed electricity capacity in June 2025, five years ahead of its earlier target. By February 2026, non-fossil sources accounted for 52.57% of installed electric power capacity, according to the report.
As of October 31, 2025, around 42.6 GW of renewable power capacity had received Letters of Award but remained without Power Sale Agreements with end-procurers, leaving the capacity effectively stranded.
The report also highlights the limited parliamentary attention to the continued role of fossil fuels. While renewable energy generated 1,278 questions, only 20 questions used the keyword “fossil fuel” and 32 referred to “energy transition” during the period studied.
Parliament’s climate scrutiny remains selective:
The report concludes that parliamentary engagement with climate change has been substantial in volume but selective in substance.
The report caution that parliamentary questions cannot be treated as a complete measure of Parliament’s overall commitment to climate action. However, they argue that the patterns reveal which aspects of the climate crisis receive sustained political attention and which remain comparatively invisible.
“Ten years after the Paris Agreement, India’s political attention is not keeping pace with its continuous threat status or its rising economic exposure,” the report says, arguing that parliamentary oversight needs to move beyond reacting to climate disasters and towards systematic scrutiny of preparedness, financing and accountability.
