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Subject: Climate Change

1. Global Warming and Issues
2. All about Pollution

  • Global Climate Risk Index 2021

    India was ranked the seventh worst-hit country in 2019 in the Global Climate Risk Index 2021.

    The report holds much significance for prelims as well as mains. Just for the sake of information, we must be aware of India’s performance.

    Global Climate Risk Index

    • The GCRI is released annually by the environmental think tank and sustainable development lobbyist Germanwatch.
    • It analyses to what extent countries have been affected by the impacts of weather-related loss events (storms, floods, heat waves etc.).
    • It pushes for the need to support developing countries in coping with the effects of climate change.

    Highlights of the 2020 year

    Global prospects

    • Mozambique, Zimbabwe and The Bahamas were the worst-affected countries in 2019.
    • While hurricane Dorian ravaged The Bahamas; Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi were affected by the single extreme weather event of cyclone Idai.
    • Japan and Afghanistan were the other countries that fared worse than India on the Index, while South Sudan, Niger and Bolivia fared better in comparison but still made it to the top 10 worst-affected countries.

    The burden of development

    • Eight of the 10 countries most affected between 2000 and 2019 were developing countries with low or lower middle income per capita.
    • Vulnerable people in developing countries suffered most from extreme weather events like storms, floods and heatwaves, whereas the impact of climate change was visible around the globe.
    • Poorer countries are hit hardest because they are more vulnerable to the damaging effects of a hazard and have the lower coping capacity.

    Data about India

    • According to the Index floods caused by heavy rain in 2019 took 1,800 lives across 14 states in India and displaced 1.8 million people.
    • Overall, the intense monsoon season affected 11.8 million people, with the economic damage estimated to be $10 billion (Rs.72,900 crore at $1=INR 72.9).
    • A total of eight tropical cyclones meant that 2019 was one of the most active Northern Indian Ocean cyclone seasons on record. Six of them intensified to become “very severe”.
    • The worst was Cyclone Fani in May 2019 which affected a total of 28 million people, killing nearly 90 people in India and Bangladesh, and causing economic losses of $8.1 billion (Rs.59,066 crore).

  • India’s Draft Arctic Policy

    India has unveiled a new draft ‘Arctic’ policy that and is committed to expanding scientific research, “sustainable tourism” and mineral oil and gas exploration in the Arctic region.

    Note: Five Arctic littoral states — Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Russia and the USA (Alaska) — and three other Arctic nations — Finland, Sweden and Iceland — form the Arctic Council (estd. 1996).

    Try mapping them.

    Caution: India became an Observer in the Arctic Council for the first time in 2013. And, India isn’t a full-time observer.

    India at the Arctic

    • India launched its first scientific expedition to the Arctic in 2007 and set up a research station ‘Himadri’ in the international Arctic research base at Ny-Ålesund in Spitsbergen, Svalbard, Norway.
    • It has two other observatories in Kongsforden and Gruvebadet. Himadri is manned for about 180 days a year.
    • Since its establishment, over 300 Indian researchers have worked in the station. India has sent 13 expeditions to the Arctic since 2007 and runs 23 active projects.

    Draft ‘Arctic’ policy

    • The draft policy discusses the importance of understanding the impact of climate change in the Arctic region and its connection with India’s monsoon, which is crucial for its economy.
    • India also proposes to focus on vast resources of the Arctic region including hydrocarbons, minerals and renewable power to ensure its energy security.
    • The policy is cautious in framing its involvement in the Arctic as “common heritage of mankind” but its priorities are similar to that of other non-Arctic states.
    • This policy roadmap draft rides on five pillars:
    1. Science and research activities,
    2. Economic and human development cooperation,
    3. Transportation and connectivity,
    4. Governance and international cooperation, and
    5. National capacity building.

    Nodal bodies

    • The Goa-based National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research to lead scientific research and act as a nodal body.
    • It would thus coordinate among various scientific bodies to promote domestic scientific research capacities by expanding earth sciences, biological sciences, climate change and space-related programmes, dove-tailed with Arctic imperatives.

    Why study arctic?

    • The Arctic is home to almost four million inhabitants, of which approximately one-tenth are considered as indigenous people.
    • Climate change has meant that seasons in the Arctic influence tropical weather.
    • The Arctic influences atmospheric, oceanographic and biogeochemical cycles of the earth’s ecosystem.
    • The loss of sea ice, ice caps, and warming of the ocean and atmosphere would lower salinity in the global oceans.
    • This could increase the temperature differential between land and oceans in the tropical regions, dry subtropical areas and increase precipitation at higher latitudes.
    • Arctic research will help India’s scientific community to study melting rates of the third pole — the Himalayan glaciers.

  • UN Adaptation Gap Report, 2020

    The United Nations Adaptation Gap Report, 2020 was recently released by the UNEP.

    Must read edition: Five years of Paris Agreement

    UN Adaptation Gap Report

    • UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has managed the production of UN Environment’s Adaptation Gap Report series since its first edition in 2014.
    • The aim of the reports is to inform national and international efforts to advance climate change adaptation.

    Behind the concept: Adaptation Cost

    • Adaptation Cost includes costs of planning, preparing for, facilitating and implementing the climate change adaptation measures.
    • It thus derives benefits as the avoided damage costs or the accrued benefits following the adoption and implementation of adaptation measures.

    Highlights of the 2020 report

    • The annual cost of adaptation to the effects of climate change for developing countries is estimated to at least quadruple by 2050, according to the United Nations Adaptation Gap Report, 2020.
    • The current cost for developing countries is in the range of $70 billion (Rs 5.1 lakh crore) and may rise to $140-300 billion in 2030 and $280-500 billion in 2050.

    Funding gaps

    • The ever-increasing adaptation cost has also outpaced the growth in adaptation finance that refers to the flow of funds to developing countries to help them tide over the damages caused by climate change.
    • This, in turn, has kept the adaptation finance gap from closing with the current efforts, although the fund flow has increased, the report said.
    • Adaptation costs, in actual terms, are higher in developed countries but the burden of adaptation is greater for developing countries in relation to their gross domestic product.
    • These countries, especially in Africa and Asia, which are least equipped to tackle climate change will also, be the most impacted by it, the report noted.

  • Why Geo-engineering is still a dangerous, techno-utopian dream?

    Geoengineering has steadily shifted over the last few decades from the margins towards the mainstream of climate action discourse.

    Q.What do you mean by Geoengineering? What are its practical applications? Also, discuss its limitations. (250W)

    What is Geoengineering?

    • Climate engineering aka geoengineering is the deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, usually with the aim of mitigating the adverse effects of global warming.
    • It is a deliberate, large-scale intervention carried out in the Earth’s natural systems to reverse the impacts of climate change.
    • Its techniques fall primarily under three categories: Solar radiation management (SRM), carbon dioxide removal (CDR), and weather modification.
    • Solar radiation management refers to offsetting the warming effect of greenhouse gases by reflecting more solar radiation (sunlight) back into space.
    • Carbon dioxide removal refers to removing carbon dioxide gas (CO2) from the atmosphere and sequestering it for long periods of time.

    Debates around geoengineering have burrowed to the deepest roots of our conflict with nature — do we have the right to manage and manipulate nature?

    What are the specificities of geoengineering?

    Specific technologies include-

    • Solar geoengineering or ‘dimming the sun’ by spraying sulfates into the air to reflect sunlight back into space;
    • Ocean fertilization or the dumping of iron or urea to stimulate phytoplankton growth to absorb more carbon;
    • Cloud brightening or spraying saltwater to make clouds more reflective and more.

    CDR technologies being proposed as a means to achieve ‘net zero’ emissions by mid-century involve deliberate intervention in the natural carbon cycle:

    • Carbon capture and storage (CCS), direct air capture (DAC) and
    • Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)

    India and Geo-engineering

    • We had experiments such as LOHAFEX (an ocean iron fertilization experiment to see if iron can cause algal bloom and trap carbon dioxide from the atmosphere).
    • LOHAFEX was an ocean iron fertilization experiment jointly planned by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in India and the Helmholtz Foundation in Germany.
    • The purpose of the experiment was to see if the iron would cause an algal bloom and trap carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

    How well did it fetch?

    • As expected iron fertilization led to the development of bloom during LOHAFEX, but the chlorophyll increase within the fertilized patch, an indicator of biomass, was smaller than in previous experiments.
    • The algal bloom also stimulated the growth of zooplankton that feed on them. The zooplanktons in turn are consumed by higher organisms.
    • Thus, ocean fertilization with iron also contributes to the carbon-fixing marine biomass of fish species that have been removed from the ocean by over-fishing.

    The debate over its advocacy

    • Mainstream activists are advocating solar geoengineering as a means to buy “humanity more time to cut greenhouse gas emissions”.
    • Opponents have numerous foundationally solid arguments. They warn against “taking our ecosystems even further away from self-regulation”.
    • They argue that such actions distract attention from the need for deep cuts to gross emissions which is achievable with the right political will and resource mobilization.

    Undesired consequences of geoengineering

    • Conducting tests for geoengineering is a fallacy since these methods need to be deployed at a scale large enough to impact the global climate system to be certain of their efficacy.
    • It is a large risk to take without knowing the potentially harmful consequences of such a planetary scale deployment.
    • Some of these consequences are already known. Solar geoengineering, for example, alters rainfall patterns that can disrupt agriculture and water supplies.
    • Injecting sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere above the Arctic to mimic volcano clouds, for example, can disrupt the monsoons in Asia and increase droughts.

    Geopolitical concerns

    • Manipulating the climate could have the same geopolitical function as nuclear weapons.
    • Even before geoengineering is deployed, it may be used as a threat that will likely incite countermeasures.
    • Say if governments ever gain control of changing the course of potentially damaging storms, diversions that direct storms toward other countries may be seen as acts of war.

    What lies ahead?

    • We all know that climate change is growing more rapidly than anticipated earlier.
    • Hence we should combine it with a program of deep decarbonization. This would help implement a “clean-up process” that will hasten our return to a more habitable environment.
    • Scientists agree that natural climate solutions such as forest sinks cannot be relied upon for the scale of mitigation needed.
    • Therefore, a socially just application of such technologies for carbon capture with geological sequestration offers ‘negative emissions’.

    Conclusion

    • Geoengineering cannot be treated as a magical mechanism to escape the heightening concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) while accepting the viewpoint that rapid decarbonization is impossible.
    • It also cannot be treated as a license to continue emitting more GHGs with no changes to current consumption and production patterns.
    • Specific technologies that can help us achieve negative emissions need to be publicly funded and democratically administered to ensure that they serve the public interest.
    • And they can only act as a supplement to scaling back of GHG emissions in all sectors, not a substitute.

  • The climate policy needs new ideas

    The article highlights the issues with the current climate policies which are centred on the inequality.

    Inequality and climate change

    • Inequity is built into the climate treaty, which considers total emissions, size, and population, making India the fourth largest emitter.
    • According to the United Nations, the richest 1% of the global population emits more than two times the emissions of the bottom 50%.
    • .China, with four times the population of the U.S., accounts for 12% of cumulative emissions.
    • India, with a population close to that of China’s, for just 3% of cumulative emissions that lead to global warming.
    • In an urbanized world, two-thirds of emissions arise from the demand of the middle class for infrastructure, mobility, buildings, and diet.
    • Well-being in the urbanized world is reflected in saturation levels of infrastructure.
    • Growth in the developed countries is consumption-driven not production driven.
    • The vaguely worded ‘carbon neutrality’, balancing emitting carbon with absorbing carbon from the atmosphere in forests is a triple whammy for latecomers like India.
    • Such countries already have less energy-intensive pathways that will not encroach on others’ ecological space, a young population, and are growing fast to reach comparable levels of well-being with those already urbanized and in the middle class.

    What changes are required in the policies

    • At present, the focus is on physical quantities which indicates effects on nature.
    • The solutions require analysis of drivers, trends, and patterns of resource use. 
    • This anomaly explains why the link between well-being, energy use, and emissions is not on the global agenda.
    • Modifying unsustainable patterns of natural resource use and ensuring comparable levels of well-being are societal transformations.
    • New thinking must enable politics to acknowledge transformational social goals and the material boundaries of economic activity.

    India’s unique national circumstances

    • India must highlight its unique national circumstances.
    • For example, the meat industry, especially beef, contributes to one-third of global emissions.
    • Indians eat just 4 kg of meat a year compared to those in the European Union who eat about 65 kg.
    • Also to be noted is the fact that the average American household wastes nearly one-third of its food.
    • Transport emissions account for a quarter of global emissions.
    • Transport emissions are the symbol of Western civilization and are not on the global agenda.
    • Rising Asia uses three-quarters of coal drives industry and supports the renewable energy push into cities.
    • India, with abundant reserves and per capita electricity use that is one-tenth that of the U.S., is under pressure to stop using coal.

    Way forward

    • India has the credibility and legitimacy to push an alternate 2050 goal for countries currently with per capita emissions below the global average.
    • These goals should include well-being within ecological limits, the frame of the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as multilateral technological knowledge cooperation around electric vehicles, energy efficiency, building insulation, and a less wasteful diet.

    Conclusion

    Emissions are the symptom, not the cause of the problem. India, in the UN Security Council, must push new ideas based on its civilizational and long-standing alternate values for the transition to sustainability.

  • Places in news: Sea of Galilee

    The Sea of Galilee, well-known in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic lore, has swelled up due to recent rains, according to reports in the Israeli media.

    Do you know?

    The Sea of Galilee Lake Tiberias, Kinneret or Kinnereth is a freshwater lake in Israel. It is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth and the second-lowest lake in the world (after the Dead Sea, a saltwater lake).

    Sea of Galilee

    • The lake lies in northern Israel, between the occupied Golan Heights and the Galilee region. It is fed by underground springs but its major source is the Jordan River.
    • The lake has risen to 209.905 meters below sea level due to heavy rainfall in the surrounding areas.
    • The Jordan flows into the lake and then exits it before ending in the Dead Sea, the saltiest and the lowest point on the planet.
    • Water is not extracted from the Sea of Galilee. But it is considered to be an important barometer of the water situation in Israel.

  • World to breach 1.5°C threshold by 2027-2042

    The planet will breach the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels between 2027 and 2042 according to new research.

    Ever wondered why is there so much of hue to halt the temperature rise at 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and why not 2°C? Read this newscard to get aware
.

    What does that mean?

    • The world will heat up more than it can take much earlier than anticipated.
    • The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had estimated that breach to occur between now and 2052.
    • But researchers have now claimed to have introduced a more precise way to project the Earth’s temperature based on historical climate data.

    The fuss over 1.5°C threshold

    • For decades, researchers argued the global temperature rise must be kept below 2C by the end of this century to avoid the worst impacts.
    • The idea of two degrees as the safe threshold for warming evolved over a number of years from the first recorded mention by economist William Nordhaus in 1975.
    • By the mid-1990s, European ministers were signing up to the two-degree limit, and by 2010 Cancun COP it was official UN policy.
    • However, small island states and low-lying countries were very unhappy with this perspective, because they believed it meant their territories would be inundated with sea-level rise.
    • They commissioned research which showed that preventing temperatures from rising beyond 1.5C would give them a fighting chance.

    Why 1.5°C is preferred over 2°C?

    • Global warming is already impacting people and ecosystems. The risks at 1.5°C and 2°C are progressively higher.
    • There will be worse heatwaves, drought and flooding at 2°C compared to 1.5°C. It is characterized as “substantial differences in extremes”.
    • Sea levels are expected to rise 10cm higher this century under 2°C of warming than 1.5°C.
    • The collapse of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica could lead to rises of several metres.
    • The quantity and quality of staple crops suffer under 2°C warming compared to 1.5C, as do livestock. That is bad for the availability of food in many parts of the world.

    New model shows the breach in threshold

    • The study according to which prediction model deployed reduced uncertainties by half compared to the approach used by the IPCC.
    • The IPCC uses the General Circulation Models (GCM) to express wide ranges in overall temperature projections.
    • This makes it difficult to circle outcomes in different climate mitigation scenarios.

    What is the General Circulation Model (GCM)?

    • GCM represents physical processes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and land surface.
    • It is the most advanced tool currently available for simulating the response of the global climate system to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.
    • GCMs depict the climate using a three-dimensional grid over the globe, typically having a horizontal resolution of between 250 and 600 km.
    • Many physical processes, such as those related to clouds, also occur at smaller scales and cannot be properly modelled.

    Why GCM is tricky?

    • Climate models are mathematical simulations of different factors that interact to affect Earth’s climate, such as the atmosphere, ocean, ice, land surface and the sun.
    • The data is tricky, and predictions can more often than not be inaccurate.
    • For example, an IPCC model would predict a temperature increase of a massive range — between 1.9oC and 4.5oC — if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is doubled.

    Back2Basics: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

    • The IPCC is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations that is dedicated to providing the world with an objective, scientific information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of the risk of human-induced climate change.
    • It was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
    • Its membership is open to all members of the WMO and UN.
    • The IPCC produces reports that contribute to the work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the main international treaty on climate change.
    • The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report was a critical scientific input into the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement in 2015.

  • Five years since Paris Agreement, an opportunity to build back better

    This article by the Ambassador of the European Union underscores the need for implementation and action on the commitments made in the Paris Agreement to deal with climate change.

    EU’s commitment to implement Paris Agreement

    • In December 2019, the European Commission launched the European Green Deal — roadmap to achieve climate neutrality in the EU by 2050.
    •  “Next Generation EU” recovery package and our next long-term budget earmark more than half a trillion euros to address climate change.
    • Recently  EU leaders unanimously agreed on the 2030 target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% compared to 1990 levels.

    Impact on low carbon technologies

    • These actions and commitments of the EU towards Paris Agreement will further bring down the costs of low carbon technologies.
    • The cost of solar photovoltaics has already declined by 82% between 2010 and 2019.
    • Achieving the 55% target will even help us to save €100 billion in the next decade and up to €3 trillion by 2050.

    EU working with India on climate actions

    • No government can tackle climate change alone.
    •  India is a key player in this global endeavour.
    • The rapid development of solar and wind energy in India in the last few years is a good example of the action needed worldwide.
    • India has taken a number of very significant flagship initiatives such as the International Solar Alliance, the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure and the Leadership Group for Industry Transition.
    • India and Team Europe are engaged to make a success of the forthcoming international gatherings: COP 26 in Glasgow on climate change and COP 15 in Kunming on biodiversity.

    Way forward

    • The international community should come forward with clear strategies for net-zero emissions and to enhance the global level of ambition for 2030.
    • Our global, regional, national, local and individual recovery plans are an opportunity to ‘build back better’.
    • We will also need to foster small individual actions to attain a big collective impact.

    Conclusion

    With climate neutrality as our goal, the world should mobilise its best scientists, business people, policymakers, academics, civil society actors and citizens to protect together something we all share beyond borders and species: our planet.

  • A-68s: Largest floating Iceberg

    A research mission is held to find out the impact of a giant floating iceberg A-68s on the wildlife and marine life on a sub-Antarctic island.

    Q. How does the cryosphere affect global climate? (CSM 2017)

    What are Icebergs?

    • An iceberg is a large piece of freshwater ice that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open (salt) water.
    • Small bits of disintegrating icebergs are called “growlers” or “bergy bits”.
    • Much of an iceberg is below the surface which led to the expression “tip of the iceberg” to illustrate a small part of a larger unseen issue.
    • Icebergs are considered a serious maritime hazard, especially for shipping industries.

    A-68s

    • The iceberg — named A-68s — is travelling at varying speeds depending on local conditions, but at its fastest was travelling about 20 kilometres a day.
    • The huge iceberg — the size of the U.S. state of Delaware — has been floating north since it broke away from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf in 2017.
    • It is now about 75 kilometres from the island of South Georgia, and scientists are concerned over the risks it poses to the wildlife in the area if it grounds near the island.
    • South Georgia is home to colonies of tens of thousands of penguins and 6 million fur seals, which could be threatened by the iceberg during their breeding season.
    • The waters near the island are also one of the world’s largest marine protected areas and house more marine species than the Galapagos.
    • Destruction by the iceberg will release this stored carbon back into the water and, potentially, the atmosphere, which would be a further negative impact.

  • Five years of Paris Agreement

     Climate Ambition Summit was held on the 5th anniversary of the Paris Agreement. The article takes stock of the progress made on climate action in the last 5 years.

    The Paris Agreement

    • The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 Parties at COP 21 in Paris, on 12 December 2015 and entered into force on 4 November 2016.
    • Its goal is to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.
    • To achieve this long-term temperature goal, countries aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible to achieve a climate-neutral world by mid-century.
    • It is a landmark process because, for the first time, a binding agreement brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects.

    How does it function?

    • Implementation of the Paris Agreement requires economic and social transformation, based on the best available science.
    • The Agreement works on a 5- year cycle of increasingly ambitious climate action carried out by countries.
    • By 2020, countries submit their plans for climate action known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

    NDCs

    • In their NDCs, countries communicate actions they will take to reduce their Greenhouse Gas emissions in order to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement.
    • Countries also communicate in the NDCs actions they will take to build resilience to adapt to the impacts of rising temperatures.

    Long-Term Strategies

    • To better frame the efforts towards the long-term goal, the Paris Agreement invites countries to formulate and submit by 2020 long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies (LT-LEDS).
    • LT-LEDS provide the long-term horizon to the NDCs. Unlike NDCs, they are not mandatory.
    • Nevertheless, they place the NDCs into the context of countries’ long-term planning and development priorities, providing a vision and direction for future development.

    Progress made after 5 years

    • All states have submitted their national contributions to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
    • However, these contributions are radically insufficient to reach the “well below 2 degrees Celsius” limit and are even further from the “1.5 degrees Celsius” temperature limit identified in the Paris Agreement.
    • This initial shortfall was expected — the logic of the Paris Agreement relied on iterative scaling up of national targets over time to bridge the gap.

    Are countries scaling up the targets

    • Although 151 states have indicated that they will submit stronger targets before December 31, only 13 of them, covering 2.4 per cent of global emissions, have submitted such targets.
    • While states have been slow to update their national contributions for 2025-2030, several have announced “net zero” targets in the recent past.
    • All G-7 states except the US and 11 G20 members have mid-century (2050 or 2060) net zero targets -carbon dioxide or other GHGs.
    • The Joe Biden administration is also expected to join this group.

    Issues in Net Zero targets

    1) Credibility of the commitments

    • First, the credibility check — are these long-term net zero goals aligned with short-term actions, policies and measures?
    • The IPCC 1.5 degrees Celsius Report indicated that to stay within a reasonable chance of achieving 1.5 degrees Celsius, global carbon dioxide emissions have to fall by 45 per cent from the 2010 levels by 2030.
    • Current national contributions are not on track for such a fall.
    • For many there is a mismatch between short-term actions and long-term commitments.
    • Further, there is a significant “overshoot” in terms of GHGs in the short and medium-term, and a reliance on negative emissions technologies to get there in the long-term.

    2) Fixing accountability

    • Many net zero goals have not yet been embedded in national contributions and long-term strategies under the Paris Agreement.
    • In any case, accountability under the Paris Agreement is limited. States are not obliged to achieve their self-selected targets.
    • There is no mechanism to review the adequacy of individual contributions.
    • States are only asked to provide justifications for the fairness and ambition of their targets.
    • The transparency framework does not contain a robust review function, and the compliance committee is facilitative and limited to ensuring compliance with a short list of binding procedural obligations.
    • Accountability, therefore, has thus far been generated by non-state actors outside the UN regime rather than in the regime.

    3) Fairness of climate action

    •  The issue of equity and fairness, side-stepped in the Paris Agreement, is emerging in climate litigation before national and regional courts.
    • In the landmark Urgenda case (2019), the Dutch Supreme court considered “fair shares” when identifying benchmarks against which the Netherland’s national effort could be judged in the context of a collective action problem.
    • Issues of fairness and justice, both between and within generations, are “unavoidable”.

    India’s commitment

    In 2015, ahead of the UN significant climate conference in Paris, India announced three major voluntary commitments called the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC):

    1. Improving the emissions intensity of its GDP by 33–35% by 2030 over 2005 levels
    2. Increasing the share of non-fossil fuels-based electricity to 40% by 2030 and
    3. Enhancing its forest cover, thereby absorbing 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide

    A success (?)

    • The Environment Minister said that we have achieved 21% of its emissions intensity reduction target as a proportion of its GDP in line with its pledge to a 33-35% reduction by 2030.
    • India was the only major G20 country that was on track towards keeping to its nationally determined commitments to halt runaway global warming.

    Conclusion

    Credible short-term commitments, with a clear pathway to medium-term decarbonisation, that take into account the multiple challenges states face, such as on air pollution, and development, might well be the more defensible choice for some.