Japan and India, the world’s fourth- and sixth-largest economies, are confronting a common implementation challenge: translating ambitious Net Zero commitments into changes in infrastructure, production, employment and everyday behaviour. The nature of this challenge differs across the two countries. Japan’s commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050 is supported by its Seventh Strategic Energy Plan and GX 2040 Vision. Its transition also requires greater recovery of valuable materials from discarded products for industrial use. India’s commitment to Net Zero by 2070 and initiatives such as the National Green Hydrogen Mission have expanded its policy architecture, alongside continued dependence on coal and limited integration of informal-sector capabilities into transition planning.
Effective delivery requires institutions that combine technical expertise with knowledge of how households, workers and communities use the systems being transformed. Women’s experience in household energy management, community initiatives and informal waste systems can inform project design and implementation. Yet access to this knowledge depends on whether they have a role in the institutions making decisions. The policy question is how transition institutions recognise these capabilities and give them meaningful influence over decisions.
From Representation to Influence
The representation gap is measurable. The OECD’s Corporate Governance Factbook 2025 reports that women accounted for 20.5 percent of board positions and 16.3 percent of managerial positions in Japan in 2024. Evidence from Japanese firms suggests that women directors’ positions within decision-making structures matter for the relationship between board diversity and carbon emissions. The association is weaker where chief executives or incumbent directors dominate decisions.
Evidence from India points to a related relationship. A study published in 2025, examining Indian-listed firms reporting to the Carbon Disclosure Project over 2015–2021, finds that women directors are positively associated with voluntary climate disclosure.
These findings align with broader research associating gender-diverse boards with clean-energy use and stronger climate disclosure. They also suggest that representation and influence deserve separate attention. Corporate evidence does not establish that greater representation alone improves national transition outcomes, but it provides a basis for testing how women’s participation and authority affect project decisions and delivery.
The implementation mechanism is concrete. Experience with household energy use can inform the accessibility and affordability of new systems. Knowledge of waste collection and sorting can shape collection schedules, safety arrangements and material recovery. Transition institutions need ways to bring this experience into decisions alongside technical and financial expertise.
Opportunities for Japan–India Cooperation
India and Japan bring different capabilities to this task. India’s large informal waste economy has decentralised experience in material recovery, but much of it operates with limited capital, weak safety protections and insecure links to industrial supply chains. Japan brings experience in technical standards, sorting and certification systems, workplace safety and industrial use of recovered materials.
These differences create scope for reciprocal learning. India’s Self-Help Groups, waste cooperatives and community initiatives offer approaches that could be tested in Japanese local contexts. Japan’s technical and institutional experience can help India connect informal capabilities with safer, higher-value circular-economy activities.
Exchanges between municipalities and waste cooperatives could examine how collection arrangements, household participation and sorting practices interact with technical recovery systems. Joint training and certification programmes could connect practical knowledge with standards required by industrial users.
Women engaged in these activities can contribute as workers and project decision-makers. Cooperation should recognise their existing skills while creating pathways into technical, supervisory and governance roles, giving institutional knowledge a place alongside technology and capital.
From Bilateral Learning to Implementation
Three linked policy measures could translate this agenda into institutional change.
First, Japan and India could establish a small number of joint circular-economy and community-energy pilots through bilateral working groups, municipalities and project agencies. These projects should combine community-level experience with technical, safety and supply-chain expertise. Women working in relevant community and informal-sector activities should help shape project design, with training and recognised skills certification supporting their progression into technical, supervisory and project-governance roles.
Second, selected projects under the Japan–India Clean Energy Partnership could test a proposed Gender–Climate Governance Standard. Circular-economy pilots outside its remit could use a bilateral environmental cooperation channel. The standard should specify women’s roles in project design, workforce-transition planning and implementation decisions. Participants should have access to project information, opportunities to place issues on decision-making agendas and defined review responsibilities. Project authorities should explain in writing how recommendations have been addressed. Compensation would enable workers and community representatives to participate without sacrificing their livelihoods.
These arrangements would make influence observable and allow projects to test whether women’s technical and community experience helps resolve implementation constraints.
Third, the pilots could be evaluated through a proposed Gender–Climate Governance Index, distinguishing representation, participation and influence from project outcomes. Governance indicators could track attendance, agenda-setting, recommendations and reasons for accepting or rejecting them. Outcome measures should cover worker safety, employment and wage stability, community acceptance and project delivery, using baseline and comparison data where feasible. Speed should be assessed alongside these outcomes, since participation may identify problems requiring additional work.
Evidence from the pilots could inform whether participation requirements should extend to wider bilateral projects or climate-financing arrangements.
Japan and India can use their green transition to test how technical capability and community knowledge work together. The test is whether giving women with relevant technical and community experience a defined role in decisions improves the design and delivery of the transition.