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COP26: No consensus on draft yet as countries flag concerns

India has two major problems with the fresh draft

cop-protest-afp Climate activists and indigenous people hold a protest during the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. A draft statement of the summit called on nations to ease their reliance on fossil fuels as talks entered their final hours | AFP

It is the tensest day at the Conference of Parties 26 Summit in Glasgow as the teams of 200 countries thrash out the conference document, hoping to arrive at a consensus. But the main issues of finance and responsibility have still not been satisfactorily addressed. Also, the pressure to phase out coal is becoming another major point of disagreement, with India leading the charge.

The day has only just begun in Glasgow, but teams now know that there might not be any easy resolution by the end of the day. “It has become political now,'' said a source. “Maybe some sticky points will only get resolved as COP and UK leaders make phone calls across the world.''

This is reminiscent of the time when the Paris Accord had reached a stalemate in 2015, and US president Barack Obama had to make a call to Narendra Modi to get India to agree not to have the words “historical responsibility'' in the document. The Global north did not want it to be set in ink that it had this responsibility to clean up the earth, for having caused all the historical pollution that has resulted in today's climate change events. It was a big issue with India. Fortunately, however, the Paris document still acknowledged the principle of Common But Differentiated responsibility (CBDR).

The COP 26 presidency shared a second draft of the document early this morning with all the parties. The first draft had been shared on November 10, but expectedly, there were issues with the language, and several parties had objections.

If historical responsibility was the tie-breaker six years ago, this time it's coal.

India has two major problems with the fresh draft. One is with para 20, which deals with mitigation. It says: Parties to accelerate the development, deployment and dissemination of technologies, and the adoption of policies, to transition towards low emission energy systems, including by rapidly scaling up clean power generation and accelerating the phaseout of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels.

India has long maintained that for its development to be on par with the western countries, it needs to fuel the country on coal power. Nuclear takes too long to establish, and renewables are not scalable to large requirements with the technology available currently. India is unlikely to ink any document which so clearly spells out the phaseout of coal, unabated or otherwise.

The other big issue is para 36, which deals with Loss and Damage. This section has been included for the first time in a COP draft. The particular paragraph says: Climate change has already caused and will increasingly cause loss and damage and that, as temperatures rise, impacts from climate and weather extremes, as well as slow onset events, will pose even greater social, economic and environmental threat.

India's problem is with the language of the text which seems to indicate the need to phase out coal and switch to renewables.

India also is a big advocate that the west needs to pay reparations for the damage its acts have wrought on the undeveloped and developing countries. By one assessment, India says that the world owes India 15 trillion USD for past emissions alone.

India, in fact, has demanded that climate ambition can only be raised if climate finance is raised. Modi had said that the world needs a trillion dollars a year. This, when even the 100 billion pledged annually hasn't come. India has demanded that at least a tenth of the trillion should be for India, given its size, the damage that past emissions have wrought on its lands, and the development needs that have to be met.

India is only one among the 200-odd parties of the COP. Each one has its own red flags. With time fast running out, will these get resolved?

On the other hand, it looks as if one incomplete agenda of the Paris Accord—Article 6, which was to regulate the carbon markets—should be resolved amicably.

Tomorrow will tell.

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