EDITORIAL ANALYSIS : Unpacking the Dubai climate meeting – INSIGHTSIAS

 

Source: The Hindu

• Prelims: Current events of national importance, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Nipah virus, The Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) etc
• Mains GS Paper I & II: Development and management of social sectors/services related to Health and education etc

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS

• The 28th annual Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change will take place in Dubai.

 

Puucho ON THE ISSUE

Context

Relevance of COP:

• The COP remains the central place where the machinery of global climate governance gets built.
• All countries have a voice at COPs, questions of equity and vulnerability are more likely to be placed on the table.

 

Devastating weather events of 2023:

• Extreme heat in North Africa and Europe
• Wildfires in Canada and Hawaii
• Floods in India and Libya
• Drought in the Horn of Africa.
• Land and ocean temperatures increases
• Antarctic sea ice decreased

 

Global Stocktake

●      The first Global Stocktake (GST)

●      It is a key part of the Paris Agreement machinery.

●      The GST is at the heart of a five yearly ‘ambition cycle’, which consists of:

○      country pledges for climate action

○      A global assessment of progress through the GST

○      Renewed country pledges.

●      It assesses aggregate (not individual country) progress in mitigation, adaptation and support (finance, technology and capacity).

• The GST findings: Greenhouse gas emission pathways are not on track to limit warming to the Paris targets of 2°C or 1.5°C.

 

Challenges to GST:

• Developing countries: GST must look at past efforts and bring accountability for the failure of many developed countries, consistent with equity
• Developed countries argue that developing countries will account for the bulk of future emissions and the GST should focus on limiting emissions going forward.

 

What does the GST do?

• GST calls for greater ambition
• It calls for enhanced implementation of pledges.
• It focuses on actions countries can and should take now versus uncertain future statements of intent for future decades.

 

What should GST do?

• GST should inform and drive the next round of bottom-up national pledges — Nationally Determined Contributions — mandated by 2025.

 

The case of Fossil Fuels:

• India has been among those advocating a broad focus on all fossil fuels versus a narrow focus on coal.
  • As was included in prior COPs.
• Coal is the most polluting.
  • Addressing climate change requires addressing all fossil fuels.
• Oil and gas are much larger sources of energy in the developed world and critical to petrostates such as Dubai
• India depends more on coal.

 

Way Forward

• Diplomats at the COP are tasked with addressing an ever-more urgent problem under challenging conditions for global cooperation.
• To give implementation concrete form, the COP is likely to include language that calls for countries to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency
  • Ideas that were notably included in the recent G20 Delhi Leaders’ Declaration.
• Adaptation has often been the neglected dimension of climate negotiations: COP28 is an opportunity to correct this, because a ‘Global Goal on Adaptation’ is to be agreed, setting unified, consistent targets for enhancing resilience and adaptive capacity.
• Establishment of a Loss and Damage Fund, agreement: This COP is tasked with advancing progress.
  • In a pre-negotiation: A fragile consensus was won on several issues:
    • Who will pay into the fund – developed countries are ‘urged’ and developing countries are ‘encouraged’
    • who will receive – the vaguely worded ‘particularly vulnerable’ countries.
  • The World Bank was agreed as an interim host of the fund, but under strict governance guidelines to provide a greater say for recipient countries.
• The GST is careful to call for ambition not only in action but also support for those actions, notably finance.
• By COP28, the discussion has shifted to a concrete assessment of needs to support mitigation and adaptation, with numbers hovering in the low trillion.
• The stakes for countries from COPs are consequential, in terms of climate impacts, fossil fuel energy politics, and competitiveness in emergent energy technologies.
  • All this will not be resolved in Dubai, but it will be an important marker in the slow unfolding of global climate politics.

QUESTION FOR PRACTICE

Besides being a moral imperative of the Welfare State, primary health structure is a necessary precondition for sustainable development.” Analyze.(UPSC 2021) (200 WORDS, 10 MARKS)