SAFARI: Modelling Sustainable Alternative Futures for India's Net-Zero Transition

India faces a formidable challenge in balancing its development goals and climate targets. Addressing this requires a holistic understanding of the system, including the interconnections and trade-offs involved in achieving these objectives. While Integrated assessment models (IAMs) aid in such analysis, they under-represent the Global South, lack transparency in model structures and input parameters, over-rely in futuristic technologies such as carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies and miss the non-linear feedbacks yielding least-cost optimal pathways which can be misaligned with the regional reality. In this context we developed Sustainable Alternative Futures for India (SAFARI), a transparent integrated system dynamics simulation model encompassing all economic sectors, the only global south model tailored specifically for these challenges in the Indian context.  SAFARI prioritizes Desired Quality of Life (DQoL) goals such as food and water security, housing, healthcare, and universal access to education while explicitly modelling resource feedbacks such availability of land, water and materials. This framework enables the development of sector-by-sector mitigation or “real-zero” scenarios without compromising energy requirements or carbon space necessary for development. Unlike some global IAM scenarios, SAFARI ensures no DQoL goals like food security are compromised in low-carbon futures. SAFARI’s unique approach yields results that complement global integrated assessment models, which are least-cost and GDP-driven and primarily inform IPCC scenarios. This study details SAFARI’s sectoral modeling approach and presents indicative scenarios towards India’s Net zero 2070 target. In Business-as-usual (BAU) scenario emissions continue to rise and peak in 2070. The Long-Term Strategy (LTS) scenario simulates moderate interventions across multiple demand-side sectors and the supply sector including behavioural shifts, increased efficiency and fuel changes. The emissions in LTS scenario peak in 2041 with a post-peak decline. Land use sector offset residuals for the net zero by 2070. Demand-side interventions have the potential to reduce primary energy demand to a large extent alleviating pressure from the power sector to decarbonize, enhancing the feasibility of achieving net zero emissions without heavy reliance on CDR technology. These scenarios highlight SAFARI as a decision-support tool for creating multiple what-if scenarios that aid in better understanding of overall system and the trade-offs and synergies among various sectors.