Give India the carbon space to develop: Yadav to G7 countries

New Delhi: Targets on carbon neutrality and increased climate ambition will not fly unless developed countries provide means of implementation to developing countries, environment minister Bhupender Yadav told the G7 environment ministers on Saturday in Sapporo, Japan.

Developed nations must take on larger and rapid CO2 emission cuts to meet carbon neutrality goals before 2050, while providing developing countries like India the legitimate carbon space to grow, Yadav said.

“The global goal of reaching net zero by 2050 requires enhanced descaling of emissions by the developed countries,” he said. “This will provide space for countries like India to achieve the development required for its people, which will provide necessary defence against the impacts of climate change, environmental degradation and pollution.”

The new synthesis report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment, the world’s largest group of climate experts, emphasises that development is the first defence against climate change, Yadav pointed out. “The report reinforces the scientific view that CO2 is the primary GHG (compared to other GHGs) that needs to be drastically reduced to achieve the global temperature goal as agreed in the Paris Agreement,” he said. GHG is short for greenhouse gases.

“We do hope that the developed countries will make good their commitments on finance for combatting climate change and provide the same for dealing with the environmental degradation and biodiversity loss,” the environment minister said. Reaching targets on carbon neutrality and increased ambition will not fly unless they are made keeping equity and common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities consideration in view, and the developed countries meet their commitments to provide means of implementation.”

In line with India’s Lifestyle for Environment mission announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Glasgow climate summit in 2021, individual actions have the potential of a revolution, Yadav said.

The key issues at the G7 meeting will be on how the informal grouping of countries address the goal of containing planetary temperature rise within 1.5 degree Celsius over pre-industrial levels; how they address coal power generation; and their common view on rest of the fossil fuels in the communique that will come out of the meeting that ends on Sunday. A draft leaked from the meeting states their statement will call on nations to take action “in this critical decade”, urging a peak in global greenhouse emissions by 2025 at the latest.

This language may be aimed at China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, which is targeting a peak in its carbon emissions by 2030, according to a report by the AFP news agency. The draft also stresses the “urgency” of slashing global emissions by 60% by 2035 from 2019 levels, as recommended by the IPCC panel.

India has contributed 4.8% to the global mean surface temperature change resulting from historical emissions of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide, a new research paper has said. In comparison, the US contributed to 17.3% of the change, the highest globally, and China contributed to 12.3%, the paper published in Nature journal on April 29 said.

Overshooting 1.5°C warming will lead to irreversible impacts and risks for human and natural systems, all growing with the magnitude and duration of overshoot, IPCC’s synthesis report said on April 20. The IPCC indicated preventing overshoot of 1.5°C was a matter of survival as every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards, and result in irreversible adverse impacts on polar, mountain and coastal ecosystems, impacted by glacier melt, or by accelerating sea level rise.