Current Issues and Analysis 5th June 2026

International Relations & Economy: India-UK Critical Minerals Global Supply Chain Observatory (GSCO)

Context: Reinforcing their bilateral ties, India and the United Kingdom recently launched the Critical Minerals Global Supply Chain Observatory (GSCO) in New Delhi. The initiative aims to secure and strengthen the supply chains for critical minerals that are essential for clean energy technologies, electric mobility, and advanced manufacturing.

What is the GSCO?

1. Collaborative Architecture

• The GSCO is a tripartite joint initiative spearheaded by:
  • TEXMiN (Technology Innovation in Exploration & Mining Foundation, a DST-backed hub at IIT-ISM Dhanbad)
  • IIT (ISM) Dhanbad
  • University of Cambridge (UK)
• Origin: The initiative stems from the India–UK Technology Security Initiative (TSI). It was first announced during the India–UK Prime Ministers’ bilateral engagement in October 2025 and subsequently formalized through a Research Collaboration Agreement in March 2026.

2. Core Operational Mandate

• The GSCO functions as a data-driven digital platform.
• It is dedicated to monitoring global critical mineral flows, mapping supply risks, anticipating market disruptions, and providing strategic intelligence to policymakers, industry leaders, and researchers.

Strategic Significance for India

Critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements are the building blocks of the 21st-century economy. The GSCO is strategically vital for India on multiple fronts:

• Supports the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM): It provides essential, data-backed intelligence for India’s domestic mineral discovery, exploration, processing, and recycling initiatives.
• Reduces Supply Chain Vulnerabilities: The global processing of critical minerals is currently highly concentrated (particularly in China). The GSCO will help India monitor global material flows and mitigate risks arising from over-dependence on a single geography.
• Facilitates Clean Energy Transition: By ensuring secure and predictable access to key minerals, the observatory supports India’s ambitious targets in renewable energy, battery storage, and electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing.

Broader India–UK Relations

• India–UK Vision 2035: The launch of the GSCO supports the bilateral Vision 2035 roadmap, which focuses on strengthening cooperation in economic growth, advanced technology, climate initiatives, and resource security.
• Synergy with Trade Pacts: The observatory complements the overarching India–UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) by addressing mutual concerns around creating resilient and secure supply chains for the future.

Science & Environment: Mega Science Vision-2035 Report on Climate Research

Context: The Indian climate research community recently submitted the Mega Science Vision-2035 (MSV) Report on Climate Research to the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Union government. The report raises a critical alarm regarding India’s loss of indigenous instrument-manufacturing capacity and outlines a comprehensive roadmap to secure the country’s meteorological and environmental future.

About the MSV-2035 Report

• Nodal Institution: Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.
• Nature of Document: It is a community-authored roadmap reflecting the priorities, gaps, and “hopes and aspirations” of India’s climate researchers. It serves as a strategic framework rather than a mandatory government policy.
• Objective: To outline the long-term national strategy to strengthen India’s climate observation, modeling, forecasting, and adaptation capabilities leading up to 2035.

Key Concerns Highlighted in the Report

1. Loss of Instrument-Making Culture

India’s climate science sector has almost entirely lost its domestic capacity to build scientific instruments.

• Data Integrity Risk: The country relies heavily on imported equipment, which is often operated without proper calibration for years. This leads to incorrect data being reported in journals, threatening the global credibility of Indian scientific output.

2. Over-Reliance on Foreign Earth System Models (ESMs)

An Earth System Model (ESM) combines atmospheric, oceanic, and land surface data to simulate long-term climate trajectories.

• Currently, Indian models are primarily adapted from the US and Europe. These models are highly sensitive to regional inputs they were never designed to integrate, making them inadequate for India’s unique and dynamic tropical climate.

3. Unassessed Impacts of ‘Uncontrolled’ Renewables

While India is racing toward its Paris Agreement commitment of 500 GW of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030, the report warns that the long-term micro-climatic consequences of massive solar and wind energy installations remain “poorly understood” and require systematic, long-term environmental monitoring.

4. Procurement Hurdles

The mandatory use of the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) previously created bottlenecks, as vendors prioritizing the lowest bids often failed to supply high-precision, customized research equipment. (Note: The Finance Ministry relaxed these norms in June 2025, allowing select institutions to bypass GeM for specialized purchases up to ₹200 crore).

Structural Constraints of Indian Weather Forecasting

Forecasting in India is inherently more complex than in the West due to several structural challenges:

• Geographical Asymmetry: India’s tropical climate is far more dynamic, erratic, and unpredictable than the systematic meteorological stability of temperate nations like the US or UK.
• The Climate Change Multiplier: The climate crisis is fracturing historical weather patterns. Traditional predictive models based on past baselines are becoming less reliable as weather phenomena become highly divergent.
• Macro-Micro Predictability Gap: While the IMD excels at predicting macro-level phenomena (like the broader monsoon trajectory or regional heatwaves), anticipating sudden, hyper-local anomalies (like isolated cloudbursts) remains exceptionally difficult.

Key Recommendations: The Eight Mega Projects

To bridge these gaps, the MSV report proposes eight “mega projects” planned in a phased manner up to 2035:

1. Indigenous Earth System Model: Build a domestic ESM “from first principles” leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to suit context-specific geographic and atmospheric conditions.
2. Boost Domestic Manufacturing: Target investments to revive the domestic production of scientific instruments and calibration technologies.
3. Expand Monitoring Networks: Scale up surface weather stations, deep-ocean buoy networks, and greenhouse gas monitoring systems to eliminate current geographical “blind spots.”
4. Dedicated Remote Sensing: Deploy specialized satellites to track greenhouse gases, cloud dynamics, and Himalayan glacier retreat.
5. Climate & Health Observatories: Integrate environmental surveillance data with public health data to monitor climate-sensitive diseases and heat-related risks.
6. “Polluter Pays” Mechanism: Devise scientific methods to estimate the Social Cost of Carbon (the economic cost of damages from an extra ton of CO₂) and strictly implement the “polluter pays” principle.
7. Carbon-Neutrality Research: Targeted engineering research on carbon capture, storage, and clean energy mixes.
8. Thematic Field Campaigns: Conduct large-scale field experiments on aerosols, the cryosphere, and the Urban Heat Island effect.

India’s Recent Meteorological Interventions

To counter these challenges, the Ministry of Earth Sciences and IMD have recently operationalized several advanced initiatives:

• Mission Mausam: A comprehensive umbrella mission to upgrade weather prediction and observation.
• Bharat Forecasting System (BharatFS): Launched in May 2025, this indigenous AI-driven model provides high-resolution (6 km) weather predictions down to the Gram Panchayat level.
• SkyCast System: An advanced atmospheric remote sensing system inaugurated at IGI Airport, New Delhi, designed to unify real-time measurements of fog, aerosols, and visibility for weather-smart, “fog-free” aviation.
• Advanced Dvorak Technique: AI-assisted tools for precise cyclone intensity estimation.