India, speaking on behalf of the BASIC countries – comprising Brazil, South Africa, India and China, issued a stark warning to the developed world to get serious about climate finance at a plenary session of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow this week.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting, now in its second and final week, involves delegates of each country working on delivering the goals set during the World Leaders’ Summit last week. The negotiators now have the tough task of aligning different national interests into a comprehensive way forward plan by the end of the summit on November 12.
India’s Lead Negotiator at the summit, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Additional Secretary Richa Sharma, took to the floor to call for clear timelines on climate finance to ensure a new finance goal is in place before 2025.
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“BASIC would like to warn that lack of a serious approach to climate finance will jeopardise the enhanced mitigation and adaptation ambition as well as net zero pledges of parties,” said Sharma.
“Trust in multilateralism and credibility of the process is at stake. Post 2020 mitigation ambition and net zero pledges require significantly enhanced climate finance. The exact magnitude of the new finance goal can be determined through a structured process, with clear timelines and milestones so that we have a new finance goal well before 2025. It is a simple ask from many developing country parties,” she said, adding that more workshops and seminars to discuss the new goal were only delaying matters further.
India laid out its position in favour of strong and credible domestic mitigation actions by developed country parties, without undue reliance on cheap offsets to maintain high carbon, unsustainable lifestyles.
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“It has been over a decade since the annual $100 billion pledge, and the world is still waiting for its mobilisation and delivery,” Sharma pointed out, during a Joint Stocktake Plenary at the Glasgow summit.
India also reiterated its stance that cover decisions of COP26 should remain within the confines of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement (PA) from 2015.