It’s that time of the year again. Hordes of government diplomats, civil society and academics have headed to discuss climate change. This time, the UN Conference of the Parties (COP30) is in Belém, a Brazilian city on the edge of the Amazonian rainforest. Then in Delhi and its surrounding areas, the air has turned foul, and citizens are struggling to breathe.
This year, as always, the news on climate change is grim. The UN report says global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise inexorably; the world is on course to breach the guardrail of 1.5°C temperature rise by the early 2030s. This is devastatingly bad news as even with a 1.2°C temperature rise, catastrophic extreme events are hitting just about every part of the world. But this news is now so predictable that we barely hear it. This is when we can literally see the climate impacts in our daily lives. The UN meeting has gradually turned into nothing more than an “event”—a place to network, espouse, and hold forth; it is no longer about holding governments to account.
Then as winter approaches north India, the winds die down; cold air settles close to the ground. Pollution stings our eyes and makes them burn; our lungs protest. For a few months, like clockwork, the media makes pollution top news; politicians trade blame; and people watch the drama with disgust. With little action the rest of the year, pollutant levels rise, year after year. This year, the Delhi government decided to play God, sending planes into the skies to seed clouds and make it rain. This scientific feat had the media mesmerised. The experiment failed spectacularly, but the government had shown it “cared”. This, even though it is known that moisture in the air only traps pollutants and makes the problem worse. What clears the air is heavy rain and strong wind. We should ask the learned scientists—from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur—why they recommended this costly farce.
My real concern, however, is that the annual climate summit and our own annual pollution circus have both become excuses for showcasing action that is utterly inadequate and unserious.
The COP was designed to be the place where parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change would take stock of progress on implementation and negotiate the next steps. The climate agreement, by its nature, is contentious and fractious. It divides the world between countries that have contributed most to the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and therefore have the responsibility to be first movers to reduce emissions and those that still need space to develop and so will need to emit. Given this schism, it was agreed way back in 1992 that mitigation targets would reflect historical emissions and that finance and technology would be provided so that the “growing” world could develop differently; it would decarbonise even before it carbonised.
But in the 35 years since, up to COP30, the world has procrastinated on these issues. Worse, the 2015 Paris Agreement erased the principle of equity. Every country now bears responsibility (albeit with some differentiation) to set its own nationally determined contribution (NDC) targets. This has destroyed a rule-based global system. Many countries on the “non-polluters” list in 1992, have since metamorphosed. The agreement should have been amended to account for this. It needed an agreed formula—an index based on past and present emissions—to change the side on which the country would be seated.
Instead, now when countries of the Global South—those that need development and have contributed little to emissions in the atmosphere—demand finance or technology transfer, it is seen as immoral. Their legitimate demand is dismissed, much as parents might ignore a petulant child asking for a new toy or toffee. It is a roulette. At each conference, a new scheme is discussed—the loss and damage fund (in COP27), the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance or NCQG (in COP29), or the global goal on adaptation (on agenda for COP30). Each time, there is a call for new mechanisms and fresh money. But it is largely symbolic, like the cloud-seeding charade. What little comes in the name of climate finance is a loan or equity and adds to the debt burden. This year, the most vulnerable nations will pay more in interest payment than they receive in international assistance. They will be worse off because of devastating impacts of climate change and the lack of finances for development—forget climate action.
These annual charades must end. In Delhi, that means year-round action to reduce pollution (the plan exists but is not implemented). In climate policy, it means cutting down on side events and recognising that public noise works to obscure governments’ non-action. The spotlight must stay on implementation. On action. We cannot talk our way out of this.