The signatories of the Paris Agreement are expected to submit new – and more ambitious – NDCs to tackle the climate change.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will arrive in Glasgow on Sunday for the COP26 climate summit.
In Glasgow, he will join more than 120 Heads of Government and Heads of State at the World Leaders’ Summit (WLS) of the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) – a designated UN zone for the global summit.
What is COP?
The word ‘COP’ stands for ‘Conference of the Parties’. In the climate change sphere, ‘the Parties’ are the governments which have signed the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC). The COP brings these signatory governments together once a year to discuss how to jointly address climate change.
The conferences are attended by world leaders, ministers, and negotiators but also by representatives from civil society, business, international organisations, and the media.
The COP is hosted by a different country each year and the first such meeting – ‘COP1’ – took place in Berlin, Germany in 1995.
Paris agreement
The Paris Agreement, often referred to as the Paris Accords or the Paris Climate Accords, is an international treaty on climate change, adopted in 2015. It covers climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance. The Agreement was negotiated by 196 parties at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference near Paris, France.
The Paris Agreement’s long-term temperature goal is to keep the rise in mean global temperature to well below 2 °C (3.6 °F) above pre-industrial levels, and preferably limit the increase to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F), recognising that this would substantially reduce the impacts of climate change. Emissions should be reduced as soon as possible and reach net-zero by the middle of the 21st century.
Simply put, COP26 is a critical summit for global climate action. To have a chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees, global emissions must halve by 2030 and reach ‘net-zero’ by 2050.
Why is COP26 important?
Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are at the heart of the Paris Agreement and the achievement of these long-term goals. NDCs embody efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
The NDCs submitted in 2015 were collectively not ambitious enough to limit global warming to ‘well below’ 2 degrees, never mind 1.5 degrees. The signatories of the Paris Agreement are, however, expected to submit new – and more ambitious – NDCs every five years, known as the ‘ratchet mechanism’.
COP26 is the first test of this ambition-raising function. One of the main ‘benchmarks for success’ in Glasgow is that as many governments as possible submit new NDCs and, when put together, these are ambitious enough to put the world on track for ‘well below’ 2 degrees, preferably 1.5.
Climate change in 2021
US/Canada
In late June, western Canada was caught under a “heat dome”, a phenomenon causing scorching temperatures when hot air is trapped by high pressure fronts, and heats up even more as it is pushed back down.
The country broke its record high temperature several times, finally capping at 49.6 degrees Celsius (121 degrees Fahrenheit) in the village of Lytton on June 30.
The US states of Washington and Oregon were also affected.
A study by a group of leading climate scientists found that the weather conditions (which caused hundreds of deaths) would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change.
The 2021 California wildfire season is an ongoing series of wildfires that have burned across the state of California. As of October 27, 2021, a total of 8,239 fires have been recorded, burning 2,495,889 acres (1,010,050 ha) across the state. At least 3,629 buildings have been destroyed by the wildfires, and at least seven firefighters and two civilians have been injured battling the fires.
Europe
In mid-July western Europe was hit by devastating floods after torrential rains that ravaged entire villages and left at least 209 people dead in Germany and Belgium, as well as dozens missing.
The flooding also caused damage in Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
China
Flooding also hit China in July, with cars strewn across the central city of Zhengzhou as shocked residents picked through the debris of a historic deluge that claimed over 30 lives.
An unprecedented downpour dumped a year’s worth of rain in just three days on the city, instantly overwhelming drains and sending torrents of muddy water through streets, road tunnels and the subway system.
India
India has had its own share of sufferings owing to the changing climate.
In February, a rock-ice avalanche in the Chamoli district in the Indian Himalayan Mountains killed dozens and left hundreds missing. The death count grew to 204, with 27 million cubic meters of rock and ice collapsing.
A glaciologist who investigated the site told AFP the catastrophe was “clearly a fallout of climate change and in itself a tell-tale of our future”.
In the Indian Himalayas, about 10,000 glaciers are receding at a rate of 30 to 60 metres (100 to 200 feet) per decade as global temperatures rise.
In May Cyclone Tauktae claimed 155 lives in western India including dozens working on oil rigs off Mumbai. It was the fiercest storm to hit the area in several decades.
Barely a week later Yaas, with winds the equivalent of a category-two hurricane, killed at least nine people and forced the evacuation of more than 1.5 million in the east.
With waves the height of double-decker buses, hundreds of thousands lost their houses.
In early July, tens of millions of people sizzled in just the latest heatwave across northern India.
India’s weather department has declared a heatwave almost every year in the last decade with temperatures sometimes touching 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit).
India at COP26
India’s stance at the COP26 Summit will be to highlight the country’s “ambitious” Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) goals for the post-2020 period under the Paris Agreement.
These include a reduction in emissions intensity of its GDP by 33 to 35 per cent by 2030 from 2005 level, as well as achieving 40 per cent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by 2030.This is to be achieved with the help of transfer of technology and low-cost international finance, including from Green Climate Fund.
“India is on track to achieve these targets and is clearly the best performer among the G20 countries on climate action. As per the Climate Change Performance Index 2021, India is among the top 10 performers in the world,” Indian officials said ahead of the summit.
However, to tackle the growing concerns of climate change, it’s not enough for a country like India to meet its targets. It also has to ensure that NDCs by the other major signatories are ambitious enough for the global community as a whole, to limit global warming to ‘well below’ 2 degrees, if not 1.5 degrees. This is what India will try to focus on and its visible in its stand for COP26- “Climate justice for climate change”.
India’s war cry for the battle against climate change incorporates the claims of the developing world that its developed counterparts have been shifting their goal posts in the various rounds of talks to build a global consensus right from Kyoto Protocol to Paris Agreement.
1⃣ day to #COP26
6⃣ years since leaders made a promise to the world in Paris.
1⃣2⃣ days to honour that promise in Glasgow.#TogetherForOurPlanet
— COP26 (@COP26) October 30, 2021
India would reaffirm that the zero-emission idea was being used by the developed countries to evade their responsibility and transfer its burden on countries like India as the battle continues to make polluters pay.
It will be a victory if India manages to get other major signatories on board to start from ‘net negative’ level instead of the proposed ‘net zero’.
Since 1751, the world is said to have emitted over 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO2. To reach the target of limiting average temperature rise to 2 degree Celsius, urgent emission cuts are needed. The US has emitted around 400 billion tonnes of CO2 or 25% of historical emission more than any other nation on the earth. This is over 8 times that of India’s cumulative CO2 emissions of less than 50 billion tonnes.
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