Climate Change

The Glasgow climate conference has delivered enough to keep the hope alive for meeting the 1.5°C climate goal.

A great hype has been created around the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) at Glasgow. John Kerry, the US climate Czar, has repeatedly called the meeting the world’s “last best chance” to avoid climate hara-kiri. Similar sentiment has been expressed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. More than 100 world leaders attended this climate gala in the first week, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden.

On the first day of the Glasgow climate conference – COP26 – the biggest announcement came from India. Ending speculations on whether India ‘will’ or ‘can’ make a net-zero pledge, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the country will reach net-zero emissions by 2070. How ambitious are these targets?

COVID-19 has reminded the world about the implications of destroying the nature. But, the world has an excellent opportunity to do something meaningful to not just reverse biodiversity loss but also improve it. In 2021, at the UN Biodiversity Conference, countries will come together to adopt a new global biodiversity strategy for the next decade – the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. We must learn from the past frameworks, especially the Aichi targets' achievements, and design a quantifiable and measurable framework. Besides, we must address zoonosis as an essential component of the post-2020 framework.

Five years since the Paris Agreement, we are at an inflection point. The current policies of the countries have put the planet on a path to a 3.2°C temperature increase this century. Very soon, we will exhaust the carbon budget for 1.5°C.  This will have devastating consequences on communities, economies and ecosystems in the developing countries like India. It is in India's interest that the global emissions are reduced significantly. For this, India will have to take a leadership role in climate negotiations. The energy transition taking place in the country provides space for India to be a leader in climate actions.