Trump presidency shadow on climate summit in Baku
India locked itself into substantive commitments, which it could not reverse when Trump, in his first term, pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement
The 29th Conference of Parties (COP 29) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Baku, Azerbaijan, that begins today will have its most consequential negotiator sitting in the United States (US), influencing its outcomes without being present. On the eve of the inauguration of the second term of Donald Trump’s presidency, his declared intention to walk out, once again, from the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change will inevitably alter the negotiating briefs of delegates attending the Baku conference.
The world’s largest producer of oil and gas is set to abandon the key decision taken at COP 28 that the world must “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero emissions by 2050”. This implies that such a transition will now not only be more costly for other parties but also put them at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis the US. Trump has pledged to remove restrictions on oil and gas exploration and production in the US, including in ecologically sensitive areas. There will be little rationale left for other existing and potential fossil fuel producers to transition away from current energy systems. This is a huge setback to the already anaemic global effort to tackle the climate crisis before its relentless advance puts the planet in existential peril.
COP 29 is expected to take a decision on the next round of climate finance to be made available by developed to developing countries from 2025 onwards. This has been grandly called the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). The previous goal of $100 billion per year pledged at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009 was never achieved. It was re-pledged at the Paris Climate Summit in 2015 for the next decade and has still not been delivered despite some fancy and creative accounting as well as lumping together of public and corporate capital flows and even philanthropic funds.
With this history of short-changing, what could developing countries expect from NCGQ? India proposes $1 trillion per year. That is fantasy. The developed economies are facing persistently decelerating growth, inflationary pressures, higher defence expenditures and populist, inward-oriented domestic political sentiments. Even if commitments of more than $100 billion annually are pledged, they are unlikely to be delivered.
Now, another ploy has been deployed. The US and the European Union (EU) are arguing that large emerging economies — also high-emission countries (read China and India) — and rich Gulf countries should contribute to the NCQG, too. This is a continuation of the longstanding effort to erase the difference between developed and developing countries, eviscerate the principle of “common and differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities”, the well-known CBDR principle enshrined in the UNFCCC, and set aside the related principle of “historical responsibility”.
The focus now is on current emissions while the responsibility for the “stock” of emissions which have accumulated in the earth’s atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and for which the advanced industrialised countries are overwhelmingly responsible, is no longer acknowledged. Current emissions add to the stock, but it is the stock that is responsible for the climate crisis. India’s effort, in the negotiations post-Paris, to have this subsumed under the principle of equity, has not been successful. We see a classic attrition process at work since the Copenhagen climate summit, where legal commitments assumed by developed countries under the UNFCCC, have been rendered meaningless.
The same dynamic will apply to the Loss and Damage Fund, which was adopted with much fanfare at COP27. It has a paltry sum of $700 million in pledges so far. The assessed requirement is a minimum of $100 billion per year up to 2030 and then rising to $400 billion a year in subsequent years. One may confidently predict that this Fund will struggle to get beyond a billion. It is still not clear what the criteria will be to determine loss and damage, which is beyond adaptation, and what would be the scale of compensation offered. We have seen how declaratory commitments are so tied up in bureaucratic and technical complexities that they remain on paper.
One may still expect some modest but practical outcomes. The Azerbaijan hosts have put forward an initiative for global energy storage capacity by six times over 2022 levels reaching 1,500GW by 2030. This is indispensable for expanding renewable power, such as solar and wind, in which India is significantly invested. We should take a lead on this.
There is a proposal for collaborative exploration of a global market for clean hydrogen. Since India has launched its ambitious national hydrogen mission, it could be one of its leading promoters.
The proposed Green Digital Action Plan seeks to apply digital technologies to advance climate action. India has taken the lead with its digital public infrastructure project, which is now on the G-20 agenda. It should support the Azerbaijani initiative and shape it so that it aligns with the G-20 project but with specific applications to the climate crisis and energy transition.
These areas are not narrowly climate-focused but have significant developmental co-benefits. They will be of value irrespective of progress on the COP climate agenda.
India should learn from its experience at the Paris COP in 2015. It locked itself into substantive commitments, which it could not reverse when Trump, in his first term, announced that the US was walking out of the Paris Agreement. It would be prudent to keep our options open for now. Our priority should be to undertake ambitious and urgent climate action domestically because that remains in our own compelling interest. India is a net importer of fossil fuels whose supplies are volatile. An accelerated transitioning away from fossil fuels will advance our energy security and diminish pollution. Expanding our forests will reduce net emissions but also promote bio-diversity. India’s success in pioneering an ecologically sustainable development trajectory would be its best contribution to tackling the global climate crisis.
Shyam Saran is a former foreign secretary and a former Special Envoy of the PM for Climate Change (2007-10). The views expressed are personal
Continue reading with HT Premium Subscription
