At COP26, India to seek actionable commitments, tech & fund transfer from developed world

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that he will attend the COP26 summit in Glasgow, United Kingdom. India has set its agenda for the summit addressing climate action. India will be pushing for actionable commitments on technology and money transfer from the developed countries. While committing to bring about significant changes to mitigate the critical threat of climate change, India in its agenda will also underline that developed countries have been continuously changing the goalposts over the years, while addressing climate action. India will pinpoint that inaction by the developed nations is an unchanged story over the years.

As per sources, it was revealed that India will bring the attention of global participants as to how the goalposts set by developed nations kept on changing over the years in four major domains of climate action. The four domains are -- Goals on Temperature, Mitigation, Finance, and Responsibility.

Temperature

While addressing issues on continuously revolving agendas on temperature, India will highlight that since the climate convention in 1992 to 2015 Paris COP 21 summit, world leaders have not been able to fix one specific target. In the 1992 climate convention no temperature target was set, however, temperature targets of below 2℃ were set in the Copenhagen Accord in 2009. Switching from this, a temperature of 1.5℃ was given equal status to 2℃ at COP17, 2011 at the Durban Declaration.

Similarly, attempts to push temperature target of 1.5℃  as preferred over 2℃ were made in the Article 2 of the Paris Agreement, 2015 says, "Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change."

Mitigation

There were no binding commitments for developed nations on mitigation, however, there were weak but binding commitments for developing nations as announced during 1997, Kyoto COP13. In 2017, mitigation was placed on developing countries by voluntary declaration through (Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions) and demand for work progress through Long-Term Cooperative Action (LCA) including commitments by developing nations was made under (COP13, 2007).

Then in 2011, intense pressure was put on all developing countries to accept legally binding commitments, in an attempt to undo differentiation and especially CBDR. (Durban, COP17, 2011). Which was again revamped in 2015, as no legally binding commitments that enforce responsibility fixing of targets (Nationally Determined Contributions - NDCs)  was fixed, however a process to promote "ambition" (excuse for increased pressure on developing countries) was decided upon at (Paris, COP21, 2015).

Finance & Technology

India will assert that finance and technology transfer from developed to developing countries is fundamental in the Convention. However, no finance commitments and technology transfer mechanisms were constructed over 17 years from the Convention at Rio to Copenhagen. Indian diplomats will also put across other pertinent issues regarding finance and technology transfer commitments. 

Responsibility

Other than this India will also call commitments and responsibilities of other nations, who failed to stand by them, asserting for more accessible measures for all. 

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