Editorial: Payback time

The clock is ticking away as the climate catastrophe appears imminent. With the rich nations failing to honour their funding commitments in climate change mitigation, the crisis is deepening by the day. In the ongoing global climate summit—COP27—at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, India has rightly put the onus on wealthy nations to substantially enhance the […]

The clock is ticking away as the climate catastrophe appears imminent. With the rich nations failing to honour their funding commitments in climate change mitigation, the crisis is deepening by the day. In the ongoing global climate summit—COP27—at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, India has rightly put the onus on wealthy nations to substantially enhance the quantum of climate finance to developing countries. The commitment of $100 billion per year made over a decade ago by developed nations is minuscule, given the scale of the needs. Even that commitment has not been fulfilled so far. The flow of funds has been erratic and inadequate over the years. The world cannot afford to put off the issue of climate finance for another year. The advanced industrial economies need to act now to decarbonise rapidly on a war footing. Their actions must match their rhetoric. That is the only hope to restrict global warming to the levels agreed upon as per the Paris Agreement. At the current rate of global emissions, the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is likely to be permanently out of reach in nine years, a recent international study has found. Starting next year, if the world produces more than 380 billion more tonnes of carbon dioxide, the odds of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees will fall below 50%. Another report by the United Nations found that annual emissions need to fall 45% by 2030 to keep the 1.5C goal viable. The world is currently at about 1.2 degrees Centigrade, and already experiencing severe global climate impacts. Every additional fraction of degree of warming will exponentially exacerbate the crisis.

Although emissions today are lower than they would have been if fossil fuel consumption rates were unchanged from the pre-Paris Agreement average, global emissions are still rising from year to year. India and other developing countries are insisting that the wealthy nations should agree to a new global climate finance target, considering that the costs of adapting to climate change have grown exponentially. According to estimates, funds in the range of $6-11 trillion are needed till 2030 to meet the targets set by developing countries in their Nationally Determined Contributions and Needs Determination Reports. The World Bank Group gave $31.7 billion in climate finance to various countries in 2021-22, but it continues to face criticism over not doing enough to help developing nations make the shift to clean energy. The developed nations must be held accountable for brazenly polluting the planet to make huge profits and half-heartedly fulfilling their climate finance commitments. A rapid transition can be promoted by having lower tax rates for goods whose production has low to zero carbon emissions. Unscrupulous entities, including corporates and investors, should be penalised for undermining the fight against global warming.

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