Opinion Express View on record carbon dioxide levels: Climate justice

It’s now apparent that efforts to cut down GHG emissions are not making an appreciable difference. The latest warning has come from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US. Its observatory in Mauna Loa in Hawaii has reported that carbon dioxide levels in May have recorded a new high — 424 parts per million (PPM), up from 421 PPM in May last year. The agency’s data shows that carbon concentration grew at about 1 PPM per year till about the 1970s. But the rate of increase has spiralled since then. In the last decade, the annual increase touched 2.5 PPM. It has now crossed the 3 PPM mark. The current carbon levels are 50 per cent higher than the pre-industrial era. The writing has been on the wall for some time now. The trouble is climate negotiations have not achieved much since the high of Paris eight years ago.

Climate diplomats from around the world are currently meeting in Bonn to lay the ground for the UNFCCC’s COP 28 in Dubai at the end of this year. This year’s conference has added significance because climate scientists have begun work on a critical mandate of the Paris Pact. Known as the Global Stocktake, the exercise will determine the exact gap between the pact’s goals and the climate actions taken so far. The review is slated to conclude at the COP in Dubai, where delegates are likely to deliberate on the means to address the shortfall. The exercise is not mandated to assess the efficacy of the measures taken by individual countries. But with collective global action proving inadequate, questions are being raised about Paris’s credo of voluntarism. That means that familiar differences over apportioning responsibilities are likely to dog the stocktaking exercise as well. The initial discussions at Bonn indicate the shape of things to come. On Tuesday, the US delegation asserted that bridging the gap was not the sole responsibility of developed countries. It argued that the next round of climate action plans must involve contributions from all sectors of the economy — a veiled criticism of India whose mitigation plans focus heavily on renewable energy and increasing the forest cover. India has remained steadfast in aligning climate targets with its developmental goals. On Tuesday, it coordinated with other developing countries to demand that the developed countries fulfil their pre-2020 commitments under the Paris Pact’s predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol.

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The arguments of the developing countries have received a boost from a recent study published in the journal Nature Sustainability. It reckons that the US has used up more than four times its fair allocation of the world’s carbon budget — the global carbon budget starting from 1960 is 1.8 trillion tonnes of CO2, according to the IPCC. India, in contrast, has used less than a third. In the course correction after the Paris Pact, such calculations of climate justice must find a place.