With the COP26 climate conference at Glasgow coming up in less than a week, the world is gearing up for some major discourse around climate change and strong commitments in the action plans by all countries. Having forgone the conference last year due to the pandemic, this year’s summit has even more expectations built up even as experts claim it might already be too late for the Earth. The conference, starting October 31, will go on till November 12 and will consist of two weeks of solid negotiations and holding countries accountable for their environmental responsibilities. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that was released earlier this year in August came with a warning to begin extensive work on reducing the human impact on the environment stating that any more delays would make it too late. The COP26 must focus on each country’s individual responsibility as well as the developed countries’ responsibility to aid the developing ones to meet their goals. The Paris Agreement, signed in 2015 at the COP21 stated stopping global warming at 1.5C as one of its main goals. According to experts, the current NDCs, that is, Nationally Determined Contributions through which each country decides its climate goal individually, are insufficient to meet the 1.5C goal. One of the major expectations from the summit is negotiating stricter action plans from countries whose current NDCs don’t meet the mark. There are high hopes riding on the developing coun- tries, especially those of the G20 to come forth with highly ambitious NDCs that show drastic action plans to reduce emissions. All eyes are on China and India - two of the world’s major emitters - who still haven’t come forth with updated NDCs with concrete plans to reduce emissions. On the other hand, since developing countries often have to bear the brunt of climate change, they are sure to take this as an opportunity to ensure that the developed countries honour their promises of providing them with climate finance. The richer countries have failed to provide the promised $100 billion per year to developing countries for tackling climate change since the pledge was initially made in 2009.
10 Jan 2022
Yukta Patwardhan
