India and COP27: How does the new climate report affect them?

The last seven years were the warmest on record for our globe. And this year, our national capital was hit five heat waves between March and May this year. And in one of them, the mercury shot up to a record 49.2 degrees Celsius. 

Sometimes, hard numbers get the message across better. Heatwaves cost India an income loss of 5.4 per cent of Gross Domestic Product in 2021. The Climate Transparency report said that this was the highest such loss among G20 nations.

There was also a 55 per cent jump in deaths due to extreme heat in India. This was revealed by a comparison between a Lancet study’s data from two periods. The first one lasted from 2000 to 2004 and the second from 2017 to 2021.

And, the Centre for Science and Environment says heat waves in India are expected to worsen with the change in climate.

The consequences of our fossil fuel dependence were more visible than ever in 2022. Europe was hit by heatwaves. Floods overwhelmed Pakistan. China, the Horn of Africa and the United States faced prolonged and severe droughts. 

Here is the particularly worrisome part. The rise in temperatures has been in line with model projections, according to experts. But, extreme weather events are occurring faster than predicted.

And, that is the new normal for a world that is only 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in pre-industrial times.

But, this could be just the tip of the iceberg. The updated climate pledges by countries, including India, will lead to a less than 10 per cent cut in projected 2030 greenhouse gas emissions. A 45 per cent reduction is necessary by 2030 to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Instead, the Earth is on track for a temperature rise of 2.4-2.6 degrees Celsius by that time. And that is if the current conditional and unconditional pledges are implemented. 

This is the sobering verdict of the United Nations Emissions Gap Report released last week.

Climate change expert Avantika Goswami points out that this has already been a record year for extreme weather events across India.

The impact on farmers’ livelihoods, public health and labour productivity has been very real. Indians lost 167.2 billion potential labour hours due to excessive heat in 2021, according to the Lancet. Experts have also linked the recent projected drop in wheat production to climate change.

Byte of Avantika Goswami, Programme Manager, Climate Change, CSE

India updated its nationally determined contribution in August. And, New Delhi is likely to raise the issue of climate finance at the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference, or COP27. It is being held at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, between the 6th and 18th of November. 

Highlighting how crucial India’s goal is, climate change expert Ulka Kelkar points out that developing countries like India have also made conditional pledges. These require additional finance or technology transfer. The Emissions Gap Report says the success or failure of these pledges will be the difference between 2.1 degrees Celsius of temperature rise or 2.9.  

To meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees Celsius goal, total climate finance must grow more than 10 times faster than current rates. Instead, the rate of increase has slowed in recent years. Total climate finance must reach 5.2 trillion dollars per year by 2030, according to the World Resources Institute. 

This will mean an average increase of 460 billion dollars a year.  

Byte of Ulka Kelkar, Director, Climate Programme, WRI India

Developed countries had pledged to hit 100 billion dollars in climate finance a year to developing countries by 2020. They have still not delivered on that front. But, Kelkar says that negotiations have started for a new, much larger climate finance goal for beyond 2025. She says India’s COP27 agenda will be that a serious and substantive number is agreed upon. That will make it possible to undertake the actions needed in this decade. New Delhi will also push for more finance through grants instead of loans. 

Goswami says climate adaptation is an area where India must make its demands loud and clear at COP27.  After all, India is the seventh-most vulnerable country with respect to climate extremes.

Its agenda should be increased financing and greater clarity about the global goal on adaptation.

Another agenda item will be operationalising the central loss and damage fund for those disproportionately affected by the climate crisis.  

India’s contribution to historical cumulative CO2 emissions is just 3 per cent, compared to the US and the EU’s 25 and 17 per cent, respectively. Goswami points out that India has played by the rules of the Paris Agreement and is doing its fair share, if not more. Nonetheless, it will face calls to make more ambitious pledges. In the immediate future, India must push through its climate finance agenda at the COP27, while navigating the brinkmanship that is a common feature of such conferences. After all, as the COP27 target statement says, making finance flows a reality is an urgent priority amid the current financial crises, debt challenges and increasing interest rates.