India not to enhance climate target immediately, calls for more action

NEW DELHI: The government has called for a serious discourse on climate finance that would be required to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement target of keeping a global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

In a discussion paper titled “Climate Summit for Enhanced Action: A Financial Perspective from India”, the Union finance ministry said, for now, India will only be able to elaborate or clarify its post 2020 climate actions as pledged in its nationally determined contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, and not announce enhanced NDC targets as expected by UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres at Climate Action Summit on September 23.

“India is doing the promised adaptation and mitigation actions in mission mode. However, finance still remains the critical issue as India is stepping up its targets majorly by relying on domestic budgetary resources... India will be better placed to consider a mid-term assessment of its actions and suitably recalibrate through re-examination and improvement when the global stocktake takes place in 2023,” the paper said.

It stressed that India was well aware that “world needs to do much more than what they are currently committed to because current promises aren’t enough”. But data on climate finance referred to in the paper shows that developed countries have not delivered on their promises.

Referring to “Summary Report of the Standing Committee on Finance of UNFCCC (2018)”, it said total climate specific finance flows from developed countries in 2016 amounts to around $38 billion, which is less than 40% of the $100 billion target of climate finance (Green Climate Fund).

The GCF finance to India amounts to only $177 million, out of which only $77.8 million is grant-based finance, according to the paper. Whereas for developing countries, the estimated costs for implementing NDCS would be much over $4 trillion.