Why in news?
The United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is hosting the 24th Conference of Parties (CoP-24) meeting in Katowice, Poland.
What will be the focus of the meeting?
- The focus of CoP-24 is largely on implementation of measures that was agreed to in the Paris Agreement Work Programme (PAWP).
- The key tasks cut out for this meeting would include –
- Drafting a well-balanced operation rulebook
- Bringing clarity on domestic processes for preparing an updated nationally determined contributions (NDC) by 2020
- Assessing progress on climate finance
- Engaging private sector investors to stimulate climate actions using relevant market mechanisms.
- Also, the most recent political developments and the report on 1.5C Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have a mixed impact on the CoP 24 negotiations.
What are the steps taken by India in this regard?
- Some of the major steps that India has taken to fulfil its climate obligations are Just transition, nature-based solutions (NBS) and e-mobility.
- Just transition - It refers to the importance of proactively managing socio-economic challenges arising out of the transitions from business-as-usual pathways to a decarbonised economy.
- Over the years, India has demonstrated leadership to establish climate justice, galvanising like-minded countries and agencies and needs to work closely with the international community.
- NBS - India’s NDC proposal to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5-3 billion tonnes of CO 2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030 underscores the opportunities offered by NBS.
- It could help improve the use of open space, particularly in the urban context, and deliver a wide range of non-market, community-level resilience dividends.
- Also, the actions here would help India achieve both its NDC goals and SDG goals.
- E-mobility - On its commitment to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP, India is promoting e-mobility.
- The government is focusing on manufacturing, shared infrastructure, including better urban design, accelerated adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and other pathways.
- However, the urgent need is to expedite and strengthen sub-national level actions, providing the capacities and resources to execute the State Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC).
What should be done?
- Climate finance that was pledged by the developed nations to the Green Climate Fund ($100 billion by 2022) has to be implemented.
- A clear consensus on the “rule book” that helps to achieve decarbonising economies should be reached.
- Thus, the UN climate change meet in Poland must take the Paris agenda forward and ramp up ambitions.
Source: Business Line
