India pushes for equity at crucial IPCC meeting | Latest News India

The negotiations that led to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest synthesis report revealed deep disparities between wealthy nations and developing countries like India in terms of the finance needed to tackle the climate crisis and the role of the developed world in bringing about the emergency.

The world’s largest body of climate experts warned again last week of the dangers of global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius. India has made a range of interventions to address issues of historical responsibility, emissions stemming from high consumption by the wealthy and grossly inadequate climate finance flows from developed countries, two briefing papers accompanying the negotiations said.

Developed countries have attempted to change the narrative of a lack of climate finance for developing countries by watering it down and making it simply a question of funding constraints, according to a briefing paper released by the Third World Network (TWN), an observer organization of the IPCC.

India has been seeking more detailed and detailed information on mitigation options in terms of costs, benefits, evidence of effectiveness, feasibility and deployment, the network said. She also expressed disappointment that developing country representation was weak and the report’s approval process lacked inclusiveness.

There were deep fissures in the way the Global North and Global South responded to the panel’s findings, the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD) said in its latest Earth Negotiations Bulletin. India is supported by Brazil and South Africa in calling for the adoption of clear language on equity and climate justice, backed by efficient means of implementation, including finance, under the principle of shared but differentiated responsibilities, IISD said.

India and China also resisted urges to cite rapid changes in global surface temperatures over the past 50 years because it does not give a well-rounded picture of what led to the situation, the bulletin said. India, supported by Saudi Arabia, China, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico, proposed keeping language dealing with historical net CO2 emissions from 1850-1989 (58%) and 1990-2019 (42%). , rather than just focusing on emissions from 1990-2019. The panel agreed to include both numbers.

India’s delegation to the IPCC consisted of six members, including JR Bhatt, Senior Scientific Advisor at the Ministry of Environment; T Jayaraman from the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation; and Tejal Kanitkar, Associate Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies. It was chaired by Tanmay Kumar, Additional Secretary of the Ministry.

“India has taken a number of specific and far-reaching measures, starting with the inaugural plenary session itself,” the ministry responded to HT’s inquiries. “These included insistence on specific references to equity per se in relation to various aspects of climate change mitigation, specific references to the differentiation between developed and developing countries, and linking equity to questions about developed countries’ historical responsibility for and acceptance of past emissions Leading current climate action, including the flow of funds and technology transfer from developed to developing countries.”

In terms of finance and technology transfer, India intervened to “include the provision of finance primarily from public sources, ensure the scale, scope and speed of climate finance, and ensure that this finance is predominantly in the form of grants or concessional loans and not to is taking place and it must be guaranteed that it will not increase the debt burden of developing countries,” the ministry said.

Regarding technology transfer, it was repeatedly pointed out by the Indian delegation that this is an integral part of the means to implement various mitigation and adaptation measures.

At the end of the negotiations, which took place between March 13 and 19 and which were attended by government officials from 195 countries, India noted that the actual space devoted to important issues in the IPCC Synthesis Report is quite limited and the issues are not address equity and equity in the context of global mitigation and adaptation efforts, burden sharing and provision of means of implementation (funding, technology transfer and capacity building).

“While there has been resistance to referencing the developed world’s $100 billion commitment to developing countries, there has been tremendous effort, notably by Germany, Luxembourg, the US, Switzerland, Norway, France, Japan and Australia, to adopting a language to align financial flows with ambitious climate action,” the TWN said in its briefing. This means that the developed countries tried to make climate finance dependent on the climate protection efforts of the developing countries.

Warming above 1.5°C will result in irreversible impacts and risks to human and natural systems, all of which will increase with the magnitude and duration of the exceedance, according to the IPCC’s synthesis report published on March 20. According to the report, the 1.5-degree target will be exceeded in the next few years even in the lowest emission scenario.