Paris rulebook, finance goal to top agenda: Bhupender Yadav
More than 195 countries had evolved and adopted the Paris rulebook – a set of guidelines for implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement at COP 24 in Katowice, Poland in 2018.
India will focus on pushing for a new collective long-term climate finance goal and finalisation of the Paris rulebook at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change negotiations in November in Glasgow (COP 26), Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav said in a statement on Saturday.
More than 195 countries had evolved and adopted the Paris rulebook – a set of guidelines for implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement at COP 24 in Katowice, Poland in 2018. But all issues related to the rulebook were not finalised in Poland. “India will engage constructively at COP 26 and evaluate bridging proposals to conclude the Paris rulebook, which can be done by delivering on the climate finance promises of the developed countries,” Yadav said, following his presentation at a pre-COP meeting underway in Milan.
“It is high time that we conclude years of protracted discussions on the Paris rulebook so that countries can get on with the business of implementing the Agreement and holding each other accountable for their pledges. Also, once these rules are decided, there can be carbon trading between countries and a share of the proceeds can go to fund adaptation and resilience to climate hazards,” said Ulka Kelkar, director of the climate programme at the think tank World Resources Institute in India.
One of the unresolved issues of the Paris rulebook is the carbon trading mechanism. “The Paris Agreement allows countries to transfer emissions reductions among themselves. The rulebook needs to specify the rules for how countries will do so – such as by selling credits for their emissions reductions to another country –0 but also ensure that these reductions are not counted twice,” added Kelkar.
“India emphasised on strong climate action in this decade to ensure that the world is on track to stay within the temperature goal of the Paris agreement, as well as to adapt to its impacts, and minimise loss and damage. Hence, the COP 26 outcome must emphasise the need to plug the ambition gap by delivering the means of implementation support that will allow developing countries to enhance their climate actions,” a statement from the environment ministry said on Saturday.
