As part of the 27th edition of the UN-Conference of Parties, Sharm El-Sheikh, an Egyptian port city by the sea, will welcome more than 45,000 registered participants starting on Monday (UN-COP). Participants include representatives from the 195 UN-COP member nations, businesspeople, scientists, activists, and meambers of indigenous and local communities.
Over the years, the UN-COPs have developed into a massive networking event where, under the guise of a brewing climate disaster, various interest-groups leave after drawn-out talks with little more than a commitment to convene again the following year at a new location. Numerous sub-events, protests, and theme pavilions kick off the two-week long jamboree with a roar, like a meeting of world leaders.
At the occasion, various leaders of state make speeches about the necessity of preventing the world from warming any more than is necessary due to carbon emissions. In Glasgow, Scotland, at the 26th COP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged that India would achieve net-zero emissions, or carbon neutrality, by 2070. Although it is unknown if he would attend, U.S. President Joe Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are anticipated to attend.
From this point on, the summit appears quiet but is actually humming with activity as numerous negotiating teams from various countries, business associations, and think tanks come together, lay out draught language agreements, and engage in semantic battles over commas and semicolons. The main founding document is now the 2015 Paris Agreement that commits countries to keep temperatures from rising over 2°C by the end of the century and as far as possible below 1.5°C.
This guiding principle results in an annual agreement, the latest being the Glasgow Climate Pact — an assemblage of various Articles and sub-articles — that outlines the responsibilities of every country and how they propose to take action on doing their bit to curtail carbon emissions. As has now become a pattern in most COPs, the negotiations build to a crescendo where concerns are aired about an impasse and then, the President of the COP — this time, it will be Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs — will push the deadline by a few hours and then a document, flush with incremental gains, is conjured up when the gavel comes down.
“COP’s implementation”
According to Mr. Shoukry, the most recent COP will be a “Implementation COP.” “If we are to maintain the temperature objective within reach and avert future harmful effects, this entails implementing every provision of the Paris Agreement fully and faithfully, as well as seeking even more ambitious NDCs. It also entails implementing a transformative action agenda designed to turn pledges into deeds, he added in a news release. Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, are a country’s intentions toward attaining the goals of the Paris Agreement, but they are not obligatory or binding. India’s Nationally Determined Contribution was updated, and the Union Cabinet approved it in August (NDC), which is a formal communication to the UN, spelling out steps to be taken by the country towards keeping global temperatures from rising beyond 2°C by the end of the century.
India has updated its NDC of 2015 by pledging to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 45% from the level of 2005 by 2030, achieve 50% cumulative installed capacity of electric power from non-fossil fuel-based energy sources by 2030, and add forest and tree cover to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2030. The most recent NDC emphasises India’s commitment to “..mobilise domestic and new & additional funds from developed countries..” in contrast to the 2015 version. This is done primarily to access and implement clean energy technology so that India can gradually wean itself off of fossil fuel energy sources without compromising on developmental needs.
Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav, who will be leading the Indian delegation to COP-27, has said India -like in previous years –will continue to press developed countries into making good their long-standing, unfulfilled commitment to deliver $100 billion a year of climate finance by 2020 and every year thereafter through till 2025. There is yet no definition on what constitutes ‘climate finance’ and whether it includes both loans and grants and India, he said, would press for more transparency as well as institutional mechanisms to make these funds available to developing countries as well as those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
