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| Edited By: |Source: DNA |Updated: Apr 25, 2016, 08:20 AM IST
With 175 world nations signing the Paris Agreement on Climate Change that was adopted last December, the time for action is beginning. The agreement aims to limit the global average temperature to “well below” 2 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to “pursue efforts to limit” the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees by 2030. The implications of this is that the world will be able to rid itself of the dependence on fossil fuels and create adequate carbon sinks to cancel out all greenhouse gas emissions. While the signing of the agreement by so many countries is cause for relief, the actual work of ratifying the agreement lies ahead. The Paris agreement is a legally binding document and countries are obliged to submit domestic targets known as nationally determined contributions (NDC) and detailed climate action plans. Unfortunately, these targets are separate from the agreement and are thus of a voluntary nature. Moreover, the preamble to the agreement offers several exception clauses for developing countries to continue with industrial activities that create jobs and income growth. It mentions the “different national circumstances” and the “imperatives of a just transition of the workforce” as factors that could impede the ability to adapt to stiff climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.
The Paris agreement may come into effect only from the post-2020 period. The current agreement that is in force relates to the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol that began in 2012. However, most of the 37 developed countries have refrained from the binding emission cuts they had to make in this period, because of domestic political compulsions. Not surprisingly, there is criticism that the NDCs of many countries for the post-2020 scenario are too weak and will lead to an average global temperature increase of 2.4-2.7 degrees, which could be disastrous. To paper over this glaring failure of the Paris Agreement, it is binding on countries to revise their NDCs and climate action plans every five years, starting from 2018, and each iteration has to be more “ambitious” than the previous one. A big question mark also hovers over the implementation of the present NDCs and transparency norms. While developed countries report their emissions annually, and the progress they make towards emission cuts biennially, developing countries, including big emitters like China and India, don’t face such obligations.
A key measure that will decide how seriously countries stick to their targets is the process of ratification. In India, the President, on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers is allowed to ratify international treaties under Article 73(1)(b). However, this is not legally enforceable and it remains to be seen whether the government will codify the agreement by getting Parliament to pass a law. The US is also faced with its own curious problem because many in the Republican Party which controls Congress are climate change-sceptics. So, President Barack Obama can ratify the agreement through executive action, but by not enacting it as law, and a future US president who is a climate-sceptic can renounce it. The importance of legally binding targets is that governments will be forced to do more than lip-service. India has been bemoaning the absence of international climate finance but the government was sitting on unspent amounts to the tune of Rs42,000 crore for compensatory afforestation, with Rs6,000 crore accumulating annually to this fund. India has also doubled the clean energy cess on coal production from Rs200 per tonne to Rs400, which is nearly six times higher than what developed countries tax coal. This is expected to net another Rs12,000 crore annually. In contrast, the actual international climate finance that flows to developing countries is just in the range of Rs14,000 crores. From India’s example, it is clear that many countries have the wherewithal to generate adequate funds but the problem lies in utilisation. The Paris agreement can just be a framework; the solution is statutory domestic climate change laws which specify clear and binding targets.
