India’s 2035 targets will ‘reflect the disappointment of COP29 outcome on climate finance in Baku’ | India News #IndiaFinance

India, however, is not yet ready with its 2035 action plan, and in no hurry to meet the deadline. In fact, the Indian NDC might be submitted only in the second half of the year, closer to the annual climate meeting, being held in Brazil in November this year, official sources said. There are no penalties for late submissions. Not many countries have submitted their 2035 NDCs. Even many developed country parties are yet to make their submissions. The United States, incidentally, is among those that have submitted. The Joe Biden administration had approved and submitted the 2035 submissions in December, well before Donald Trump assumed charge.

India has also skipped the December 31, 2024 deadline for the submission of the first Biennial Transparency Report (BTR), the new format in which a country has to report its detailed inventory of emissions. This report is expected to be submitted around the middle of the year.

The sources also said that India’s NDC would likely “reflect the disappointment of the climate finance outcome at COP29 in Baku” last year. It is a subtle hint that its 2035 NDC was unlikely to be a significant or ambitious upgrade of climate actions compared to the existing NDC for 2030.

India, and other developing countries, have expressed serious disappointment with the outcome of COP29, last year’s climate conference in Baku, which delivered an extremely weak agreement on climate finance. The developing countries had been seeking a commitment of at least one trillion dollars every year from the developed world in climate finance. But developed countries agreed to mobilise no more than 300 billion dollars a year, and that too only from 2035.

Developed countries are obligated under the Paris Agreement to provide money to the developing nations to help them fight climate change, but the quantum of money has to be decided through the negotiated process. As of now, they are under a commitment to raise 100 billion dollars a year. COP29 in Baku was supposed to scale up this amount substantially, in keeping with multiple assessments of countries’ needs, all of which had put the requirements in excess of a trillion dollars a year.

India had made an uncharacteristically strong criticism of the Baku agreement, calling the final agreed amount “abysmally poor” and “paltry”. It has been saying that the lack of adequate finance was not just an abdication of responsibility by the developed countries, but also a major setback to global climate action. In the absence of international financial support, developing countries would be forced to lower the ambition of their climate actions, taking up only those that they can finance through their own resources, it said.

The Economic Survey presented last week also made a similar argument, and clearly hinted at a readjustment of climate targets by India.

“The funding shortfall may lead to a reworking of the climate targets. Considering that domestic resources will be the key to action, resources for meeting development challenges may be affected, undermining progress toward sustainable development objectives and compromising the integrity of international climate partnerships,” the Economic Survey said.

For the 2030 period, India has made three commitments. It has said it would reduce the emissions intensity of its economy (emissions per unit of GDP) by 45 per cent from 2005 levels, and would ensure that at least 50 per cent of its installed electricity generation capacity comes from non-fossil fuel sources. It has also promised to increase its forest and tree cover so that they can absorb an additional 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. India is on course to achieve all these three targets well ahead of 2030.

The 2035 NDC has to be a progression over the 2030 targets. But the scale of this progression is to be decided by the countries themselves, in keeping with their capabilities and resources.

There is another reason why India is unlikely to stretch itself right now while making commitments for 2035. It is planning to host the COP33 climate conference in 2028. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced this intention at COP28 in Dubai in 2023. Host countries usually announce some new climate initiatives ahead of the conference to demonstrate their leadership and create a momentum for a more meaningful outcome. India would like to leave some room for enhancing its NDC commitments during that time.

It had enhanced its 2030 NDCs also mid-way through the five-year cycle, having achieved two of its three initial targets well in advance of the 2030 deadline.