NEW DELHI: Experts claim that India has a special position at the negotiation table for international climate policy because it is both a high emitter and a country with a fragile climate. According to a 2021 study by the climate think tank Council on Energy, Environment and Water with headquarters in New Delhi, around 80 per cent of the population of India resides in areas that are extremely vulnerable to major disasters such as severe flooding and heat waves. According to the most recent estimates, the country is currently the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, after China and the United States.
To this aim, Navroz Dubash, a longtime watcher of climate policy and governance and the principal author of several U.N. climate studies, asserts that “India has always played a vital role in climate negotiations and I think Egypt.” India has insisted on the crucial need of funds for climate action. Many of India’s carbon emission goals are dependent on receiving this financial assistance. According to a top Indian government official who will participate in the negotiations, financing and coping with climate change, and reducing fossil fuel emissions would be a major concern for India at COP27.
According to the source, India wants to reiterate the 2009 pledge of $100 billion annually in climate funds for developing nations, which has yet to be carried out despite breaching its deadline by two years. They continued by saying that there are still unanswered financial problems, including what will happen to climate money in the long run, what contributions wealthy nations will make to developing nations, and how to align financial flows with the goals of the global temperature limit.
In the upcoming years, no other nation will have a greater rise in energy consumption than India, which is predicted to require $223 billion to reach its 2030 clean energy targets. Prior to COP27, India made an announcement on its new climate plan, stating that it would endeavour to meet 50 per cent of its energy needs from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. Currently, non-fossil fuel sources account for 42 per cent of the nation’s installed electrical capacity.
A major agenda on the table for many developing nations, including India, will be compensation for poor countries from wealthy, high-polluting nations for the damage brought on by climate change. This issue is known as “loss and damage” in climate discussions.
The World Bank estimates that 750 million people in South Asia have experienced at least one natural disaster in last 20 years. The frequency and severity of these disasters are predicted to increase, which will cause significant loss and harm in the area. India was listed eighth among nations most impacted by extreme weather in 2019 by the NGO Germanwatch, which noted that major floods that year resulted in damage of almost $10 billion, 1,800 fatalities, and 1.8 million displaced people.
Since many of the deadlines set for combating climate change have already gone or won’t be due for several more years, many commentators describe this year’s conference as being “in-between COP.” According to Avantika Goswami, a climate policy expert at the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, this makes the meeting “a good moment to push forward the issues that the developed world typically sideline, like loss and damage, climate finance and adaptation.”