Refusing to Sign is part of India’s COP Strategy, warns Anjal Prakash, an economist in Hyderabad, India
Refusing to sign is part of India’s COP strategy, says Anjal Prakash, a climate-policy researcher at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. He says that India sees the negotiations as biased and takes aggressive steps to protect its interests. He says that India will not sign an agreement for climate change unlesswealthy nations show they can decarbonize.
India’s domestic goals are in line with its self-imposed 2070 deadline for reaching net-zero emissions, says Vaibhav Chaturvedi, a researcher with the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, an independent think tank based in New Delhi. He warns that India’s net-zero trajectory cannot be evaluated before its emissions peak, but there is no backsliding.
The country is unlikely to change to a metric that involves total emission reductions in the near future because of the need to phase out fossil fuels.
If we are to reach net-zero by 2050, India’s share in that goal should be very important, says a climate researcher based in Perth, Australia. India needs substantial international support in terms of finance.
Climate-vulnerable countries pushed for a landmark agreement on a loss and damage fund. The fund aims to provide compensation to the low-income countries that are bearing the brunt of climate-change damage.
Low and middle income nations including India are focusing on clarifying how the fund will be handled so that it can be disbursed quickly. We should not take our feet off the ground for another ten years, according to the expectation.
The 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) is being held in the Middle-East, and India is vying for the title of leader of the global south. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a strong point in his opening speech at the meeting: A small section of mankind has exploited nature indiscriminately. But the whole of humanity is paying its price, especially the residents of the global south.”
“The planet cannot afford delays, excuses, or more greenwashing,” writes climate leader Catherine McKenna in a United Nations report on how to hold ‘non-state actors’ — industry, financial institutions, cities and regions — to account on their net-zero promises. Nature says that researchers need to look at disclosures, targets and metrics for progress, and advise on what they should look like.
Climate change has placed the world in danger of breaching numerous planetary ‘tipping points’, according to a scientific assessment compiled by more than 200 scientists. Natural systems that are important to human livelihoods are at risk of being irrevocably affected by crossing those points. For example, large parts of the Amazon rainforest could be replaced by savannah with as little as 2 °C of warming. Tim Lenton, the leader of the report, says that the tipping points have never before been faced by humanity. Some positive tipping points are already in progress that could result in runaway benefits for the climate, according to the report.
When wildfires engulfed California in 2020, climate scientist Daniel Swain put his research on hold to answer journalists’ questions and speak to the public about the science behind the disaster. Many others with relevant expertise would do the same, he says, but a lack of tangible support from institutions is holding them back. “Climate scientists are ready and waiting to meet the communication and engagement challenges that the coming years will bring,” he writes. The means to support forward- thinking institutions must be quickly found.
Brown sediment marks rapidly melting ice on the Greenland ice sheet. At present levels of warming, the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are at a risk of collapse that could increase sea levels in the future.