India Pitches for Financial Support to Achieve Paris Agreement Targets

India has raised the pitch for finance and technology support to developing nations to achieve the Paris Agreement goals it had set in 2015

In the run-up to two key UN summits on Climate Change, India has raised the pitch for finance and technology support to developing nations to achieve the Paris Agreement goals of keeping a global average temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius.

A climate action summit being hosted by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will be held this month and the United Nations summit hosted by Chile in December.

Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar said India was taking decisive steps in achieving Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which is the heart of the 2015 Paris pact.

Javadekar spelt out the success stories of India on Paris NDCs to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

“In Chile, when we meet in the next COP (Conference of the Parties), we will be taking a stance that every country needs to follow their own commitments to reduce national emissions and advanced countries need to provide finance and technology support, that is most important to developing world, he told PTI.

The nations under the United Nations negotiated and adopted the Paris Agreement in which India made four commitments, including reducing greenhouse gas emission intensity of its GDP by 33-35 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, under its NDC.

Referring to the governments ambitious Clean India mission, its efforts towards eliminating single-use plastic, harnessing solar and wind energy and, creating more tree cover for protection of the environment, the minister said these will be highlighted in various UN Climate forums. He also said the Prime Ministers ambitious renewable energy programme to create 175 GW by 2022 “is a huge success and India has already reduced energy intensity by 22 percent.

His remarks are in line with the statement by the BASIC group of nations — Brazil, South Africa, India and China — in which they urged developed countries to undertake ambitious actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and meet their financial commitments, including by mobilizing USD 100 billion annually by 2020.

Replying to a Calling Attention Notice on Climate Change in Parliament in June this year, the minister had blamed the developed countries for not keeping up to their commitment of providing USD 100 billion and technology transfer collectively to developing countries like India for dealing with climate change.

“It is true that the developed world is responsible for most of the climate change situation today. Over 70 percent of the greenhouse gases emission was due to the developed countries while India’s contribution is just three percent. There was overconsumption by the people in the developed world, he had said.

The developed nations had assured in the Paris conference about jointly mobilising 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance.