At COP27, India fails to take others on board on fossil fuel cut

The UN climate summit in Egypt concluded on Sunday with a breakthrough as 197 countries agreed to set up an international fund to pay victim nations for the loss and damage they suffer from climate disasters, but the world didn’t concur with India’s proposal of phasing down all fossil fuels instead of coal alone.

The outcome document - Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan – stuck to “phase down of unabated coal power” instead of New Delhi’s proposal of “phasing down of all fossil fuels” - an idea favoured by the European Union and a few other blocks.

Also Read | Indian climate experts welcome COP27 approved landmark 'loss & damage' fund

Since last year’s climate summit at Glasgow, India steadfastly opposed any move to “phase out” coal as the trillion dollar economy of the world’s second most populous nation depends heavily on it.

“Developing countries need independence in their choice of energy mix, and in achieving the (UN) Sustainable Development Goals. For most developing countries, just transition (shifting an economic activity to a low-emission pathway) cannot be equated with decarbonisation, but with low-carbon development,” Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said at the plenary session at Sharm el Sheikh.

Even though the COP27 established a four-year work program on climate action in agriculture and food security, Yadav made it clear that New Delhi would not be on-board with a new international arrangement to cut down methane emission as that would adversely impact paddy cultivation and rearing of livestock.

“Agriculture, the mainstay of livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers, will be hard hit from climate change. So we should not burden them with mitigation responsibilities,” he said.

The summit was scheduled to conclude on Friday but went into overtime as negotiators pushed for an agreement on issues such as including mitigation, loss and damage fund and adaptation. The consensus on the document was finally reached early Sunday morning. “The world has waited far too long for this (L&D fund),” Yadav said.

Also Read | Countries adopt COP27 deal with 'loss and damage' fund

Creation of the fund is a big win for poorer nations, which are often at the receiving end of unusual weather patterns caused by climate change and global warming.

“I welcome the decision to establish a loss and damage fund and to operationalise it in the coming period. Clearly this will not be enough, but it is a much-needed political signal to rebuild broken trust. The voices of those on the front lines of the climate crisis must be heard,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres’.

Details like how the fund will be created, who has to make how much contribution and how the affected countries would secure the support, are to be worked on in next year’s Conference of Parties (COP28) that is scheduled to be held in Dubai.

The fund would initially draw on contributions from developed countries and other private and public sources such as international financial institutions, but there is growing demand to include China as one of the contributors.

Another high point is to keep the ambition of the 1.5 degree limit alive and pull humanity back from the climate cliff. The new agreement doesn't ratchet up calls for reducing emissions, but it retains language to keep alive the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The world has already warmed by 1.1 degrees since pre-industrial times.

Set against a difficult geopolitical backdrop, COP27 resulted in countries delivering a package of decisions that reaffirmed their commitment to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The package also strengthened action by countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change.