Date: 04/11/2022

Relevance: GS-3 : Environmental pollution and degradation.

Key Phrases: COP 26, COP 27, UNFCCC, Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs, Panchamrit Strategy, Climate Change, Net Zero

Why in News?

• The annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) is scheduled to be held at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt on November 6-18.

Key Highlights

• The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) was held in Glasgow, UK.
• The aim was to finalise the rules and procedures for implementation of the Paris Agreement and to get all countries to commit to a net-zero target by a specific year.
• More than 400 financial institutions overseeing $130 trillion in assets promised to align their portfolios with the target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

A Status Check

• Latest assessments suggest that current action plans of countries to meet climate goals are falling woefully short.
• Rising Emissions
  • The annual global emissions are still rising, now touching almost 50 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
  • In the decade between 2010 and 2019, the global emissions grew by over one per cent on an average.
  • Recent data suggest that the annual mean temperature of the world is already higher by more than one degree Celsius from pre-industrial times.
  • Current global emissions are more than 50 per cent higher than in 1990.

• Inadequate Response
  • The rich and industrialised countries, which were the main polluters and hence mainly responsible to bring down emissions, have not met their collective targets.
  • Developing countries like China or India, which were not major emitters till sometime back, have seen their emissions rise steeply.
  • China’s emissions have risen by almost four times, and India’s by about three times, during this period.
• World Headed to 2.8-Degree Warming
  • The overall climate objective is to ensure that the rise in global temperatures does not go beyond 2 degrees compared with pre-industrial times.
  • Preferably, it needs to be restricted within 1.5 degree Celsius.
  • Latest assessments suggest that if climate action is not immediately scaled up, the world is likely to become warmer by about 2.8 degree Celsius by the end of the century.
• Impact of Ukraine War
  • The energy and economic crisis caused by the Ukraine war is threatening to undo even the small gains made.
  • Already, the consumption of fossil fuels has gone up.
  • Countries have begun to secure more and more traditional fossil fuels to deal with the uncertainty in the energy markets.

Progress Towards Achieving COP 26 Goals

• National emissions plans
  • Nearly 200 countries agreed at last year’s COP26 summit to improve their emissions-cutting pledges, called Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs.
  • Only two dozen countries have achieved the target.
• Deforestation
  • More than 100 countries pledged last year to end deforestation by 2030.
  • Supporters included Brazil, Indonesia and Congo, which together contain more than 80% of the world’s remaining tropical forests.
  • To achieve that goal, the area deforested would need to shrink by 10% each year from the 2020 cover but deforestation fell last year by just 6.3%.
• Methane pledge
  • To date, 119 countries and blocs including the United States and the European Union have joined the COP26 pledge to slash methane emissions 30% from 2020 levels by 2030.
  • But only 15 of them have come up with concrete plans to do so.
• Funding
  • Rich countries’ failure to deliver promised finance to poorer nations has eroded trust at recent climate talks and made collective progress harder.
  • Rich countries fell $16.7 billion short of the target in 2020 and have signalled that it won’t be met until 2023.

India’s Commitment and Progress

• Commitments
  • India unveiled its panchamrit strategy at CoP26.

• Progress
  • The first two - getting to 500 GW or thereabouts of renewable capacity and meeting about half our energy needs from renewables - appear on track.
  • India is adding new renewable capacity at a faster clip than any other major economy, including China.
  • India is already meeting 25 per cent of energy requirements from renewables (including hydro).
• Challenges
  • One of the key, reasons behind India’s climate success is the underperformance of its manufacturing sector.
  • Sluggish growth in the industrial sector has led to moderate increase in industrial power demand and emission-intensity of GDP
    • Industries comprise approximately one-fourth of the economy’s total GHG emissions.
  • If manufacturing rebounds, that will worsen the problem.
    • India has plans to double steel production to about 300 million tonnes per year and ramp up cement production to meet the needs of its ambitious infrastructure development plans.
    • The air-conditioning sector is expected to sell nearly 10 million units this fiscal, compared to just six million two years ago.
  • To reach net zero emissions by 2070, the IEA estimates that $160 billion per year is needed, on average, across India’s energy economy between now and 2030.
    • That’s three times today’s investment levels.

Conclusion

• Though there would be usual calls for the need to urgently scale up climate action, the Sharm el-Shaikh meeting is unlikely to deliver anything concrete.
• Many countries, including India, had increased their climate pledges at the Glasgow meeting last year, and it would be unrealistic to expect them to do more this time.
• Occurrence of frequent climate disasters — like the historic flooding in Pakistan — is expected to result in renewed demands for a loss and damage framework, through which affected countries can seek compensation for the damages caused by extreme events.

Source: The Hindu BL, Indian Express

Mains Question:

Q. Current action plans of countries to meet climate goals are falling woefully short. Analyse. (250 Words).