GUEST COLUMN
VK Bahuguna
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) is the global community’s annual ritual for finding collective solutions for global warming staring at the face of humanity. It is conducted as the name suggests under the banner of the United Nations. The United Nations is always in the vortex of controversies as from one crisis to another it has generally failed to achieve the targets of world peace and prosperity. Already world peace is in danger due to the prolonged wars between Ukraine and Russia and between Israel and Hamas. The recent Conference of Parties (COP) was 28th in the sequence of climate change negotiations and was held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The proceedings were chaired by Sultan al-Jaber the Industry and Advanced Technology minister of UAE. He is an engineer, politician, businessman and heads the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
The final draft declaration apparently takes into account the arguments of global stock take and calls for “increasing climate action and access to finance for communities and countries threatened or affected by fragility or conflict or facing severe humanitarian needs; to strengthen knowledge and programmatic solutions for climate action in such settings; and to foster collaboration at multiple levels and across regions and humanitarian, development, climate, and peace actors to address the multi-dimensional challenges of climate change”. The climate deal signed by around 200 countries was hailed by Al Jaber as a historic package particularly for the oil rich countries agreeing for agreement on using the phrase ‘transiting away’ from fossil fuel (rather than using the more emphatic word ‘phase down’). While chairing the session, Al Jaber termed the deal as a ‘robust plan’ to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degree Celsius. While addressing the plenary he stated, “We must take necessary steps to turn this agreement into tangible action.” But what remains to be seen is how swift, just and equitable will this transition from fossil fuel be? For this to be ensured, it is necessary to either go for very heavy cuts in emission or to use technologies to offset the losses and the need for trillions of dollars finance otherwise, the declaration may remain as an attempt by the diplomats to proclaim the negotiations as success with appropriate words.
This writer has been closely following the outcome of different COPs. There are always differences between the developed world and the developing world on how to move forward on combating climatic vagaries and this COP notwithstanding the agreement of ‘transitioning away’ from fossil fuels is no exception. Without a very firm action programme with clear identification of finance it will be difficult for the world to achieve a net zero carbon emission by 2050 as agreed in COP 28. Any global tangible action programme depends upon developed countries first realising their contribution in global warming and their willingness to fund the developing world to access superior technologies. On the other hand the developing countries including India must also realise that they need to take up climate resilient development on their own and focus on research to develop technologies to meet the targets of emission reduction. India for example, is moving in the right direction as per the Paris agreement of 2015. India is to achieve its short term and long term targets under the Panchamrit action plan, i.e. reaching a non-fossil fuel energy capacity of 500 GW by 2030; fulfilling at least half of its energy requirements via renewable energy by 2030; reducing CO2 emissions by one billion tonnes by 2030. By the end of year 2030 India will be reducing the carbon intensity by 45 per cent with a target of net zero emission by the year 2070. Indian emissions in 2022 were only eight per cent of the global emission, whereas China leads with 32 per cent of the global total (11.4 billion metric tonnes of carbon) followed by the USA with 14 per cent (5.1 billion metric tonnes of carbon). The European Union also accounts for eight per cent of the global total. Going by the per capita emission, the USA leads the tally with 15.32 tonnes followed by Russia with 11.45 tonnes, China with 7.44 tonnes while India has less than two tonnes. It is thus clear that inter-generation equity needs to be considered by the world leaders to devise workable, firm and implementable solutions for meeting the targets to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.
However, the situation is grim, except for agreement on fossil fuels which this writer terms as a face saving formula to prevent the collapse of dialogue, there is nothing substantial on how to achieve targets and its monitoring specially for augmenting climate funding for the poor and developing countries. The fact is in many locations in the world the temperature rise has already crossed 1.5 degree Celsius. In India alone the average rise is in the range of .7 degree Celsius to one degree Celsius in many locations according to data collected by Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education for the period from 1930 to 2010 in around 90 meteorological stations located in forest areas.
The data revealed massive changes in the forest vegetation and thus in hydrology. Going by past experience the COP 28 declaration may prove a verbose and vacuous declaration yet again if the UNFCC secretariat does not come up with a sound and time bound programme without waiting for the COP 29. For this the world leaders must meet soon to take stock and respect the forecasts of Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and come up with a collective action programme as the Earth and the people living on it are waiting for humanity to act without fail.
India as the leading light of the global south needs to think and act innovatively and lead by chalking out a format for south-south cooperation on meeting the needs of finance and helping each other in sharing and developing the technologies. If concerted efforts are made by India and China and the oil rich countries, a substantial programme can be evolved. India should also shift focus in its district and block level planning to make it climate resilient with focus on resource management particularly water conservation, hydrology and forest management with integration of primary sector activities for better climate change adaptation and mitigation.
(The writer is former director-general in the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India.Views expressed are personal)
