Climate Finance, Tech Necessary To Promote Trust, Transparency: India At COP27
Access to climate finance and technology in developing nations is a must-have to protect the entire world, India said at the United Nations climate summit in Egypt on Monday.
Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav intervened at the ministerial high-level roundtable on pre-2030 ambition at COP 27.
In his intervention, he said that the opportunities for ambition vary across parties. This we must recognise. If not, our efforts to increase ambition from those who have little to give will only result in inaction.
"Developed countries must take the lead – after all the bulk of both finance and technology transfer is available with them," the minister said.
Yadav added that the Convention and the Paris Agreement both recognise this, but we have not had adequate action.
Second, increasing ambition requires public action. Leaving it to markets alone will not help. Markets do not function well in normal times, but either do not function or function very inequitably in moments of crisis.
"We see this with the energy crisis in developed countries. For developing countries, public action includes public sources of climate finance and technology. These are essential," he said.
He also said that the right sectors must be identified for ambition. To target small farmers for mitigation in the name of ambition would be a serious mistake.
"As in India, if in developing countries, if we target domestic and public lighting, and increasing use of clean fuel to replace biomass, we can achieve some significant gains in low-carbon development," the minister said.
While talking about barriers, Yadav said that for developing countries, accelerated low-carbon development is the route to ambition. This is a continuous process.
"This takes time, human and financial resources and sustained economic growth. So, it is not simply barriers but all three conditions have to be present consistently for low-carbon development to be achieved," he added
Just transition in developing countries is simply about enabling low-carbon development.
He said that it cannot be about an early start to decarbonization in any sector, though decarbonizing various sectors as and when feasible will arise sometime in the future.
"This will be detrimental to both the overriding priority of achieving the SDG goals by 2030 and subsequent development," as per the minister.
