Paris Agreement Requires ‘Phase Down of All Fossil Fuels’, Says India at COP27: Report

As world leaders are set to meet and debate climate action at a summit in Egypt from November 6 to 18, India in its draft text said meeting the long-term goal of the Paris Agreement requires “phase down of all fossil fuels”, according to PTI.

“Natural gas and oil also lead to emission of greenhouse gases. Making only one fuel the villain is not right,” a source in the Indian delegation attending the climate talks told PTI.

India’s draft text comes even as negotiators from 194 parties began working out a draft cover text at the UN climate summit. Citing the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Indian negotiators reportedly told the Egyptian COP27 presidency that meeting the long-term goal of the Paris Agreement “requires phase down of all fossil fuels”.

“Selective singling out of sources of emissions, for either labelling them more harmful or labelling them ‘green and sustainable’ even when they are sources of greenhouse gases, has no basis in the best available science,” the Indian side reportedly said.

The Indian negotiators also said the basic principles of common but differentiated responsibilities, equity, and nationally determined nature of climate commitments under the Paris Agreement “need to be strongly emphasised in the cover decision text, reports PTI adding that emphasis should be to ” continue to live in an unequal world with enormous disparities in energy use, incomes and emissions”.

Cover decision negotiations started on Saturday with the countries proposing what they would like to be included in the final deal at the Egypt Climate Summit.

The two-week long summit comes amid new research that shows just how dauntingly hard it will be to meet the ambitious goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — requiring emissions to be slashed nearly in half by 2030, per AFP.

The new study — published on Friday in the journal Earth System Science Data — found that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are on track to rise one percent in 2022 to reach an all-time high.

During the summit, India has asserted that developing countries require a “substantive enhancement” in climate finance from rich countries by 2024 as the previously-set goal of USD 100 billion per year by 2020 was miniscule given the scale of their needs.

At COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries had committed to jointly mobilise USD 100 billion per year by 2020 to help developing countries tackle the effects of climate change. Rich countries, however, have repeatedly failed in delivering this finance.

Developing countries, including India, are pushing rich countries to agree to a new global climate finance target — also known as the new collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG) — which they say should be in trillions as the costs of addressing and adapting to climate change have grown.

Rich countries say the issues of numbers are political and should be under political discussions and not part of technical discussions.