COP28 challenge: Those who got us here do not pay

Welcome to the world of great expectations and endless efforts to arrive at a consensus on who is guilty and who should repent. Welcome to the 28th edition of the Conference of Parties where the world remains divided between the historically responsible and the contemporary accused who believe they are being asked to pay. Welcome to the complexities of climate action and the inherent irony of the energy-driven process of economic growth. There couldn’t be a more appropriate venue.

All this in the backdrop of an unprecedented case in the European Court of Human Rights where six youth (aged 11 to 24) from Portugal have sued 32 countries alleging that their governments have “ruined childhoods” due to inadequate climate change responses, rendering their right to life ineffective and void. Backed by the Global Legal Action Network, the youth have presented evidence that policies adopted by these nations will not yield enough emission cuts and would actually cause global temperatures to rise by three degrees Celsius, in violation of the goal of 2/1.5 degrees Celsius agreed upon under the Paris Agreement. If successful, the judgment might result in significant global consequences for climate justice.

The clamour for climate action is louder than ever, and so is the yearning for economic growth. The principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” — a thread that binds the confirmed and potential culprits — is in knots. There would be few things in the world where the collaboration on action is inversely proportionate to the consensus on its magnitude. The data on continuing emissions, the cumulative cornering of the carbon budget, the energy intensity of GDP growth, and the aggregate impact of NDCs on containing the temperature rise are matters of facts and scientific analysis. What ought to be a matter of concern are the factors behind the drift in climate action that forced the UN Secretary-General to describe global warming as “global boiling”.

This drift is on account of multiple deficits — of trust, resources, capacity and unequivocal commitment.

The trust deficit stems from the non-fulfilment of the commitment to provide “new and additional finance” amounting to $100 billion by Annex II countries as per the 1994 Kyoto Protocol. They were required to “take all practicable steps” to promote the development and transfer of environmentally friendly technologies and provide financial resources to enable developing countries to undertake emissions reduction activities and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. These vulnerable countries continue to wait for the promised “investment, insurance and technology transfer” and the “special consideration on account of their limited capacity to respond to climate change” even three decades after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the setting up of the UNFCCC. Climate change, desertification and biodiversity loss continue unabated, while the Green Climate Fund described on its website as “the world’s largest climate fund” set up “to accelerate transformative climate action in developing countries” has so far committed $12.7 billion and disbursed $3.8 billion.

The resource deficit is real on account of the gap between requirement and availability. It exemplifies the trust deficit. The International Monetary Fund’s Global Financial Stability Report estimates an annual global gross climate mitigation investment of about $5 trillion by 2030 to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. According to the International Energy Agency, about 40 per cent of this will be in emerging markets and developing economies, excluding China, implying more than tripling the annual clean energy investments from $770 billion in 2022 in these countries.

Additionally, countries need to bridge the capacity deficit characterised by their inability to conceptualise impactful projects. Their NDCs, even if aspirationally deficient, need to be converted into an implementation plan and an actionable agenda. This requires enormous capacity to analyse their NDC pathways, formulate effective policies and projects, and credibly monitor and evaluate to avoid greenwashing.

Finally, the vulnerable countries where the climate change battle will be “won or lost” need to get over their commitment deficit as they continue to be bogged down by the debate on climate justice and helplessly, often zealously, follow the conventional path to economic growth with self-justified impunity due to historical wrongs. These countries must unequivocally realise that the elusive “additional finance” will not save them from the catastrophe that is enveloping them. The pursuit to look for reparation from those guilty of setting their house on fire might continue to haunt them, not help them “to be” from “not to be”.

While the stage is set in Dubai, the trillion-dollar question is whether COP28 will succeed in catching the conscience of those who rule the world by showing them the ghost of the plundered planet or will they end up a “paralysed force” making “gesture without motion” leaving a shadow “between the emotion and the response”.

The writer is former finance secretary & environment secretary who led the official Indian delegation at COP21 in Paris