Prime minister Narendra Modi will address a virtual meeting hosted by the United Kingdom to commemorate five years of the Paris Climate Agreement on December 12. The UK was to host the Conference of Parties (CoP) this year, in Glasgow, the meeting has been pushed to 2021.
Modi will have an armload of achievements and some more to talk about at this meet, given the forward movement India has made in climate change mitigation, with two international initiatives—International Solar Alliance and Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure spearheaded by India, and both organisations now headquartered in India
Addressing the press on the eve of the meet, Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) Prakash Javadekar spoke about India's trailblazing initiatives in climate mitigation, even though India's contribution to emissions, both current and historical, are much below the rest of the world. Javadekar said that India has achieved much of its nationally determined commitments (NDCs) that it made at Paris, the efforts have been acknowledged by several independent reports.
India had committed to reducing the emission intensity of the GDP by 33-35 per cent, and already India has achieved 21 per cent of the target. This, even as the Paris agreement kicks in only from January 2021. In fact, the Climate Transparency Report 2020 says that India is the only G-20 country to meet its targets. Javadekar pointed out that India contributes 6.8 per cent of present day emissions, at 1.9 tonnes per capita. The US contributes 13.5 per cent ) 15.52 tonnes per capita) and China 30 per cent (eight tonnes per capita). Even historically, over the last 100 years, India's total emissions are only three per cent of the overall global load, the US has 25 per cent, Europe 22 and China 13 per cent.
The Climate Action Tracker notes that India is among the few countries whose emissions are at the two degree target. (meaning that at the present rate of emissions, the average temperature at the end of the century will not rise above two degrees from the pre industrialised time). In fact, India is the only large country whose emissions are two degree compliant. The others in this group are Bhutan, Costa Rica, Philippines, Morocco and Gambia. The UK is at three degree compliance, while most of the larger economies are still emitting at a rate that will lead to a four degree C rise in global temperatures by the end of the century. These are China, Japan, Indonesia, S Africa, UAE, Chile, Russia and USA. Only a handful of countries are emitting below 2 degrees, these include, Canada, Australia, Switzerland and Sweden.
India is also well ahead of target on achieving the other NDCs—making renewables 40 per cent of the nation's energy mix by 2030 and managing a sequestration of 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon. Big targets, both.
The minister spoke about the initiatives India has taken in recent years to achieve climate targets. He spoke about missions like Ujjwala, Swachch Bharat and Namami Gange. He spoke about green highways mission, India's biofuel policy (a test flight with biofuel has already been done between Delhi and Dehradun), LED [bulbs] for all and the National Cooling Action Plan. Incidentally, all these initiatives have received a pat on the back from some international environmental monitoring agency or the other. India has also recorded a 15,000 sqkm increase in tree cover over the last six years.
Javadekar, however, rued the fact that other countries have not shown the same initiatives. He noted that while a lot of promises had been made, the developed world has not lived up to its financial commitments, pledged contributions of upto 11 trillion dollars are yet to see the light of the day. He said that technology transfer hasn't happened either. ``India believes that if climate change is a disaster, there should be no profit in technology transfer,'' he said.