World Leaders from more than 120 countries are attending the UN’s 26TH COP Summit including our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi in the Scottish city, Glasgow.
Conference of Parties (COP-26) has begun on 31 October 2021 and will continue till 12 November 2021. The high-level segment of COP-26 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the World Leaders’ Summit (WLS), held on 1-2 November 2021.
PM Modi addressed the World Leaders’ Summit by saying, “Adaption has not gotten the same importance as mitigation. This is injustice to the developing countries including India who are affected by climate change.”
“Climate is a huge challenge for many developing countries’ farmers including Indians. The crops are destroyed due to the changing cropping patterns, unseasonal rainfall, excess rainfall and storms. Resilience is needed in areas from sources of drinking water to affordable housing,” Modi added.
“We need to adapt a key component in developing schemes, policies and projects. In India, schemes like ‘Nal Se Jal’, Clean India Mission & Ujjawala have not only given adoption benefits to our citizens but also improved their quality of life,” Modi said.
He added, “In certain traditional communities, there is ancient knowledge to coexist with nature. We should include these customs in our adaptation practices. This knowledge should be included in the school syllabus so it is passed down to the younger generation.”
India’s progress under Paris Agreement
Currently, India is contributing only 6.8% of global emissions and its per capita emissions are only 1.9 tonnes
India’s nationally determined contribution (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement is 2 degrees compliant. The country is also likely to meet and possibly overachieve its NDCs under the Paris Agreement, the emissions gap report 2020 noted.
India’s installed capacity of renewable energy has also increased by 226% in the past five years to over 89 GW now and India has a target of increasing installed renewable energy capacity to 450 GW by 2030.
The UK will provide an “India Green Guarantee” to the World Bank, to unlock an additional 750 million pounds for green projects across India, it was announced at the COP26 summit in Glasgow on Monday.
The green guarantee financing will support clean and resilient infrastructure in sectors such as clean energy, transport and urban development.
The Summit is attended by more than 100 countries. This Summit was originally scheduled for 2020 but got delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The world leaders acknowledge the most recent report released on August 9 by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the world’s leading authority on climate science, had published a detailed assessment of how humans are driving immutable change to our fast-warming world in every region.
This report sets the agenda for climate change in the immediate future. It is one of the most significant documents informing world leaders on the state of climate ahead of the UN climate negotiations (COP26) in November.
World is strapped to a doomsday device
At COP-26, the summit began with a note by UK PM Boris Johnson saying the world is strapped to a doomsday device.
He compared the people’s situation to the fictional character James Bond – strapped to a bomb that will destroy the planet and trying to work out how to defuse it.
“The tragedy is that this is not a movie and the doomsday device is real,” he said. “Humanity has long since run down the clock on climate change. It is one minute to midnight on that doomsday clock, and we need to act now.”
He said, “As we look at the Green Industrial Revolution, it’s now needed around the world. We in the developed world must recognise the special responsibility we have to help everybody else to do it.”
Stop mining deeper
UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres speaking at the WLS said, “It is time to say enough.”
He added, “Stop mining deeper, “brutalising biodiversity” and treating our environment poorly. We are heading for climate disaster.”
Worse is yet to come
US President Joe Biden said, “Human-caused damage to the climate was already taking a devastating toll on people through natural disasters, and he said it could only be addressed by nations coming together.”
“Worse is yet to come if we fail to seize this moment,” the president said, promising that the U.S. would lead by example, not words.
“The US will do its part,” said Biden. “Action and solidarity is what’s needed, we all know that,” he said.
Biden also apologised for the previous regime’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement
Time has run out
Prince Charles at World Leaders’ Summit said, “Our efforts can’t be independent initiatives. The scale of the threat we face calls for a global solution, based on radically transforming our fossil fuel-based economy,” Prince Charles said. He said the time has run out and the world needs to act now.
President Xi Jinping of China and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are not attending COP26. China has the highest carbon emissions with a share of 30% which is almost twice as much as the second-largest Emitter, the USA.
Very true. Climate change is making the monsoon more capricious. Sometimes end of season rains are received just when the crop is ready to be harvested.