COP27 Missed Breakthroughs On Emission Reduction, Climate Finance, Says Kotak
The conference of the parties or COP27 in Eygpt concluded with an agreement to provide ‘loss and damage’ funding for the vulnerable countries hit hard by climate disasters, however, missed breakthroughs on emission reduction and climate finance, said Kotak Mahindra Bank in a report.
The report said that even as the details about donor base, quantum, timelines, etc. remain to be finalised and are expected to be decided over the next year.
Issues such as delayed climate finance of USD 100 billion per year jointly by developed countries and phasing down of all fossil fuels (and not just coal), did not witness a common ground despite the broad coalition of countries.
As per the report, the climate finance provided by the developed countries has increased over the years to USD 83.3 billion in 2020, yet remains short of the USD 100 billion per year (by 2020) goal agreed upon at COP16.
The Sharm El-Sheikh Pact (similar to the Glasgow pact) continued to emphasise on taking efforts towards the phasing down of unabated coal power and phasing out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.
Set up against a difficult geopolitical backdrop, the countries at COP27 reaffirmed their commitment to keeping the Paris agreement intact.
"Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C requires rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions of 43 per cent by 2030 relative to the 2019 level," the report stated.
The climate commitments have continued to rise in the past year (October 2021-September 2022); however, they lagged enough ambition.
A total of 39 new nationally determined contributions (NDCs) were filed under the Paris agreement, taking the overall count of the updated NDCs to 142.
The full implementation of the latest available 166 NDCs will lead to GHG emissions in 2030 being 0.3 per cent below the 2019 level, it added.
Talking about India, the report mentioned that India unveiled its long-term low-carbon development strategy at COP27, balancing its climate ambition while pursuing economic growth.
India has set up several medium-term targets and formulated policies to achieve the same.
The bank believes a focus on increasing the share of renewable energy, faster rollout of EVs and implementing carbon pricing will remain the key to fulfilling the climate goals in the near term.
"India is promoting the manufacture of clean energy technologies at scale. Existing production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes have been rolled out that support solar PV manufacturing, energy storage systems and electric vehicle technologies," it said.
Meanwhile, pursuing these low-carbon development strategies for India will require significant investments, the pace of which will largely hinge on the easy availability of climate finance.
