France backs India’s stand on climate in pre-2020 period

NEW DELHI: India’s demand for a global agreement that will address intensified efforts to tackle climate change between 2015 and 2020 has not gone unheard. Acknowledging the merit of the demand, France, which is hosting the crucial UNsponsored climate negotiations in December, is working towards a global compact that focuses on tackling climate change in the pre-2020 period.
With barely nine months left for the crucial climate change meeting in Paris, the pressure on countries to draw plans to reduce the amount of carbon produced after 2020, known in UN parlance as intended nationally determined contributions, has increased. New Delhi has questioned the single-minded focus on finalising a global compact for the post-2020 period, which is to be inked in Paris in December. India has pushed for equal focus on the pre-2020 period, arguing that without active and enhanced efforts to tackle climate change between 2015 and 2020, slowing down the rate of global warming will be difficult.

Sources said that France has taken cognizance of New Delhi’s argument and is organizing a series of informal dialogue to work towards a deal that will focus on increasing the efforts to reduce carbon pollution in the pre-2020 period and adapting to the impacts of climate change. The informal groups will have representation from the major countries and groupings—this would include representation from industrialised countries, the least developed countries, the advanced developing countries, and small island states. Persons in the know indicated that membership of the informal group could be on the lines of the Petersberg Dialogue hosted by German government and the incoming presidency of the UN-sponsored climate negotiations.

The Durban Platform agreed to in 2011 at the annual UN-sponsored climate change negotiations has two planks of action—accelerating and intensifying efforts to address climate change in the pre-2020 period and finalising the new global agreement by 2015, which would be implemented after 2020. India has therefore argued that negotiations must equally focus on both planks.

In the pre-2020 period, the onus of reducing the amount of carbon produced is on the industrialised countries, with developing countries taking steps on a voluntary basis. The rich countries are required to provide financial support, which was agreed in 2009 and 2010 to be to the tune of $100 billion a year, and were also committed to provide technology to developing countries to address climate change. In Durban, countries agreed that efforts to reduce carbon emissions in the pre-2020 period should be enhanced to ensure that rate of global warming is slowed down, and temperature increase is restricted to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

Developing countries have argued that the lack of attention to the pre-2020 efforts only serve to transfer the burden of action to poor countries.

The new agreement that comes into effect in 2020 is applicable to all countries, unlike the current regime, where the onus of action rests with the industrialised countries. Scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change maintain that delayed action will prove to be more expensive and many of the efforts that can be taken to slow global warming will be ineffective if not implemented as soon as possible.