Opinion Express View: What the new UN climate report reveals

Anew UN climate change report holds out a glimmer of hope that the world’s GHG burden in 2030 will be less than what was feared about a year ago. It shows that the national global warming mitigation targets will increase emissions by 10.6 per cent by 2030, compared to 2010 levels. This is an improvement over last year’s assessment, which projected that emissions in 2030 will rise by nearly 14 per cent over 2010 levels. This year’s analysis also shows that emissions are not likely to increase after 2030. But that’s where the good news ends. The cumulative climate ambition of countries will not limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century — the target of the Paris Climate Pact. “The current combined National Determined Contributions (NDCs) will lead the planet to at least 2.5 degrees warming,” warns the report.

At the COP-27 in Glasgow last year, 194 countries agreed to upscale their Paris Pact targets. However, only 24 of them — including India — have updated their plans. The delay is understandable. Raising climate ambition requires countries to take difficult decisions in areas as diverse as agriculture, forest management, transport, and urban planning. These issues relate to people’s livelihoods and well-being and demand that policymakers balance sustainability with developmental goals. All countries are not on the same footing in this respect, especially because climate cooperation has rarely gone beyond silos. Inadequate technology transfer from the developed world remains a persistent grouse of developing countries. There are fears that the ambitious targets of several countries could remain on paper if they are not matched by adequate financing. In 2009, developed countries agreed to raise $100 billion per annum up to 2020 to help developing countries reduce emissions and cope with the effects of global warming. The target was never met — the shortfall, according to some estimates, is more than half the total funds that had to be mobilised.

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The UN report comes less than two weeks before global climate diplomats will assemble at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt for the UNFCCC’s COP-27. Countries with a negligible carbon footprint are likely to make a strong pitch for reparations for climate-related damages at the summit. Such demands have amplified after the recent floods in Pakistan with several Pakistani policymakers pointing out that the “country had to pay the price for others’ emissions”. At the core of issues such as this lie the principles of equity and climate justice, which UNFCCC documents acknowledge, but action has remained tardy. The forthcoming COP shouldn’t go the way of its predecessors.