The fire that engulfed the main venue of the ongoing Conference of Parties (COP) 30 Climate Summit in Brazil’s Belem presented a metaphor not to be missed. As it is, the outcome was hazier than ever before – with the developed nations focusing more on semantics than on real issues. The critical point – that of climate finance – is where the bottleneck persists as before. As pointed out by the Adaptation Gap Report of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for 2023, of the $310 billion required to address climate issues, the resources committed were just about $26 billion, and, of this, 58% was in the nature of debt. In other words, even in a ‘good case scenario’, the first world is trying to transfer the climate crisis into a debt crisis. This is indeed a far cry for the annual ask of $365 billion by 2035.
Again, the transition from fossil fuels, on which many nations of the Global South depend for their basic energy requirements cannot be positioned as a ‘binary’. It is not just ‘dirty’ versus ‘clean’. Factors like livelihoods, affordability, regional economy, social dislocation and existing skill sets have to be considered. The challenges for developing countries are quite acute – for they have to manage more than one transition: rural to urban, conventional growth to sustainable development, gender empowerment, local to glocal, and from zero energy to regular power supply in the rural grids. The immediate costs of provisioning power to the remotest and most inaccessible hamlets has to be balanced with the long term benefits of empowering rural communities, or the outmigration from these areas will congest and conflate the problems of urban agglomerations.
The silver lining in this depressing scenario is that India has been acknowledged as the only country in the global south to have more than fulfilled her commitments. India has taken the lead in establishing the International Solar Alliance, Global Biofuels Alliance as well as the Leadership Group for Industry (energy) transition. India’s position is that energy transition is not just on account of our commitments at COP: it is an end in and by itself. Our emission intensity has declined by over 36% since 2005, and is on track to decrease by around 50% by 2030.
Therefore even as the COP 30 may end up in smoke, India does offer the ‘light’ of practical experience. Our market design protocol like reverse auctions have driven down costs, especially in solar energy. We are moving from climate finance to climate investment, and over $50 billion were raised last year on commercial terms. This is perhaps the only way out.
What India thinks today is a good template for the world tomorrow!
