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Talk less, cooperate more: Sitharaman to developed nations on climate goals
Sitharaman said India has fulfilled all its commitments made at the COP21 climate change conference using its own funds and that the country has been moving towards the path of adopting renewable energy.
Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said developed countries should talk less and cooperate more on climate change goals as she spoke about the $100 billion commitment promised to developing nations which was yet to be fulfilled.
Sitharaman said India has fulfilled all its commitments made at the COP21 climate change conference using its own funds and that the country has been moving towards the path of adopting renewable energy.
The minister, who was addressing the Ficci Leads 2022 event, said no country has seen the commitment of $100 billion per year being fulfilled. "($)100 billion is still on. Five years or six years have gone by. We've not seen anything of that, not just we, no other country has seen it. Island nations are drowning. Coastal areas are getting eroded. Unusual events of rain, which should happen over three or four months, pours on a single day. These are not things which (are) isolated in some part of the world. It's across the board," she was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
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"But no transfer of technology will happen, no monies will be pulled in to collectively help countries. But yet every one of us want the ambition to be even further, higher and higher. It's just not going to be possible for many countries.
"We clearly are showing progress towards renewable, we are moving towards solar.. But that is the scale at which we are doing it because we commit ourselves and we believe in it. So the one thing which, if I were to ask, we need (is) more global cooperation, probably less talk," she said.
BASIC, which is a bloc of four countries comprising Brazil, South Africa, India and China, had last year expressed concern that climate finance provided by developed countries had fallen short of the $100 billion per year commitment by 2020, and that finance tends to be provided with unilateral conditionality and eligibility criteria as well as in the form of loans, rather than grants, which aggravates the debt crisis.
“Developed countries must urgently step forward to fulfil their obligations and mobilise at least $100 billion per year from 2021 to 2025, and initiate, at COP 26, deliberations on a formal, transparent and open process for setting a new collective quantified goal on finance, under the Paris Agreement, including through an inclusive forum for deliberation with a detailed roadmap outlining milestones for adopting a goal no later than 2023,” the statement had said.
(With inputs from agencies)
