India on Monday joined hands with Brazil, South Africa and China (BASIC) to push the developed world to mobilise $100 billion annually as climate finance support to developing countries to meet their existing obligations towards carbon emissions.

The plan should include providing finance for the next five years – from 2021 to 2025 – a joint statement by the BASIC group told the ongoing COP 26 meet in Glasgow.

“Developed countries have not only failed to meet the $100-billion goal per year of support to developing countries each and every year since 2009, they continue to present the 2009 goal as the ceiling of their ambition all the way to 2025… In a context where developing countries have massively stepped up their climate actions since 2009, it is unacceptable that there is still no matching ambition from developed countries on the enabling means of implementation on climate finance support,” Bhupender Yadav, Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, said on behalf of the BASIC group.

Carbon emission

“On the long-term temperature goal, the latest available science makes it clear that all parties need to immediately contribute their fair share. Achieving this would require developed countries to rapidly reduce their emissions and ‘scale-up’ their financial support to developing countries,” Yadav added.

In a tweet soon after he landed in Glasgow from the G20 Summit in Rome on Sunday night, Prime Minister Narendra Modi too tweeted: “...I look forward to working with other world leaders on mitigating climate change and articulating India’s efforts in this regard.”

India has already indicated that it would not support the call for announcing a target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 as it believes that what is actually important is the quantum of carbon emissions by each country before reaching net zero.

According to Indian estimates submitted to the UN, India has contributed only 4 per cent of total emissions since the 1850s. In recent decades, India has consumed far less than its fair share of the global carbon budget.

The BASIC group came together in 2009 to leverage their joint political and economic clout to negotiate with the developed nations and push them to take responsibility for their historical emissions instead of passing on the burden of arresting climate change to developing countries.

Also read: G-20 make mild pledges on climate neutrality, coal financing

A market mechanism that facilitates private sector engagement in carbon markets could help further raise climate ambition, in addition to what is being achieved under the Nationally Determined Contributions, the Indian Minister pointed out.

 

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