• Climate Change and Green Economy

COP26: India accuses developed countries of ‘outsourcing’ pollution after criticism over climate summit pledge

Critics say India’s 2070 net-zero date is far later than almost any other country – but business groups in the country say developed nations must provide support if they want more While critics have claimed India’s commitments at COP26 in Glasgow do not go nearly far enough, business leaders and environmental activists in the country welcomed the pledges and called on developed nations to provide support if they want more. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2070. To acheive this he said that by 2030 the country would increase its installed renewable energy capacity to 500 gigawatts; ensure that half of India’s power capacity comes from non-fossil-fuel resources; reduce carbon emissions by 1 billion tonnes; and reduce the carbon intensity of the economy by 45 per cent. Detractors point out that the 2070 net-zero date is far later than almost any other natoin, including other major polluters such as China and Russia, which have promised to reach net zero by mid-century. But trade bodies in India say that Mr Modi has taken a bold step. A fresh start’ “We consider the commitment made by the Prime Minister at the international level as a fresh start to combat climate change,” said Rajeev Singh, Director-General of the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the nation’s premier business and industry body. “It is a huge decision considering that India is still heavily dependent on fossil fuel and coal consumption for power. Our rural villages have been completely electrified just two to three years ago but still, people do not have access to electricity in their households. Our country has to keep a balance between development and climate goals. “We require the support of developed countries for climate finance as several multinational companies are producing their goods here [in India] due to low production costs and selling them in other countries. It is leading to outsourcing of pollution, and therefore they should financially help India in the transition.” Read More - Featured Image Read More COP26: Against all expectations, cautious optimism is bubbling up in Glasgow Even Mr Modi in his speech stressed that India expected developed countries to make $1tn available as climate finance as soon as possible. India also held off from signing the UK-led Leaders’ Declaration at the summit on ending deforestation by 2030, which has been signed by over 100 countries. “India is a rich cultural country with strong connection and mythological beliefs related to forests,” said Arihant Kothari, deputy manager of NASSCOM, India’s top tech industry trade body and chamber of commerce. “Various reports suggest that the green cover in the country is increasing due to sustained efforts of afforestation by the government and campaigns by the citizens in saving the environment. Considering these aspects, India might go ahead with the treaty once there is more awareness on environment and less degradation.” ‘India’s emissions rate is low compared to developed nations’ Some environmentalists in India claim that the country has set an example and taken up a leadership role with its announcement. “There was no pressure upon India to act immediately as its emission rate is pretty low as compared to developed countries,” said Samrat Sengupta, programme director for Climate Change and Renewable Energy at the non-profit Centre for Science and Environment. “We are well on course to achieve the target of non-fossil fuel energy capacity to 500 gigawatts.” He said that renewable energy was much cheaper than fossil fuels but India faced problems with storage costs. “We are expecting the storage technology to become cheaper to ensure its increase in consumption,” he added. Mr Sengupta said India’s pledges put it in a good position compared to much of the world. “India has committed to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by one billion tonnes – roughly 22 per cent from the business-as-usual scenario – and this means that per capita emissions in 2030 will be lower than all industrialised countries of the world, including China. “As far as the net-zero 2070 is concerned, India’s target matches the commitment of the already industrialised. The world must reach net-zero by 2050, which means that the OECD countries should get there by 2030 and China by 2040. The net-zero target is not equitable or ambitious.”

• Director General Office

CJR at COP26: Inside the biggest story in the world

GLASGOW — A week ago this morning, thousands of people, many of them journalists, gathered at a convention center in Glasgow, Scotland, for the first full day of COP26, a crucial United Nations climate summit. They were greeted by a long line to get in, which would normally be a fine British welcome (some people, including me, would say that lines are the only thing Britain does well), except—unlike the best British lines—this one was apparently more of a surging, sharp-elbowed mass than an ordered, mannerly procession. (Those arriving by train from London had already faced weather-induced travel delays; actually, Britain does those well, too.) The Guardian’s Fiona Harvey said it was “inexplicable that the Scottish hosts have not managed this better having had nearly two years to prepare”; Laura Waddell later shot back, in The Scotsman, that it was the British government in London that organized the event, and quoted the tennis player Andy Murray’s famous gripe that he’s “British” whenever he wins and “Scottish” whenever he loses. At one point, a huge COP26 flag outside the venue began to fall down. It was, Fortune’s Katherine Dunn wrote, a “symbolic anecdote” that journalists “couldn’t resist.” The heavy media presence (eventually) inside the venue attested to the fact that COP26 is a huge story; as Sunita Narain, the director-general of the Centre for Science and Environment in India, put it during a recent briefing organized by Covering Climate Now, a climate-reporting project led by CJR and The Nation, journalists are often hesitant to tie the climate crisis to extreme-weather events, and so COP “becomes that one event” at which journalists can “report on the issues of climate change, the politics of climate change, the signs of climate change,” driving the climate story up the news cycle. This dynamic has been true at past COPs—particularly those that took place in Copenhagen, in 2009, and Paris, in 2015—but Mark Hertsgaard, the director of Covering Climate Now, wrote for CJR last week that American media seems to be paying much more attention this time round. “I’ve covered UN climate conferences since the 1992 Earth Summit”—the event that set the stage for subsequent COPs—and “never have US news organizations devoted as many newsroom resources, produced the sheer volume of coverage, or given the story such big play as they did in the opening days of COP26,” Hertsgaard observed. He singled out the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Guardian, and NPR for praise; TV, he wrote, “lagged, as it often does,” yet even there, the picture was positive by past standards. Media Matters for America calculated that the major cable networks collectively devoted more than four hours of airtime to the conference last Monday. Related: At COP26, some US newsrooms are finally stepping up. Will it last? Since the opening days of the conference—when many world leaders, including US President Joe Biden, were in attendance—the prominence of coverage across top US news outlets has waned a bit, superseded, in many places, by the Virginia gubernatorial election and the passage of Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill. (As I wrote last week, these are both climate stories, yet COP26 hasn’t always been discussed as part of them.) Still, a lot of coverage continues to come out of COP, with protests over the weekend bumping the story up the news cycle again. Importantly, the quality of much coverage has been good, too (though the volume makes it hard to generalize). Ahead of COP, many major outlets ran explainer packages clearly laying out the key players and the stakes, treating the conference as a story for everyone, and not just insider baseball for policy wonks. Coverage that I’ve seen of countries’ subsequent pledges has often trodden the line between skepticism and nihilism (falling signs and “FLOP26?” puns aside). The Post just splashed a big investigation finding that many countries are significantly under-reporting their emissions. Still, keen observers I spoke to said that some errors of focus and framing have persisted. Much topline coverage has focused on world leaders as personalities—suggesting, for example, that the absence of Chinese President Xi Jinping means that “China” isn’t at COP, even though the country sent its longtime climate envoy—as well as the other celebrities in attendance. (Leonardo DiCaprio showed up; the Queen, almost every major outlet told us, didn’t, on doctor’s orders.) Such figures have helped focus media attention on Glasgow, but ahead of the conference, Saleemul Huq, who leads the International Center for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh and has attended every COP, wrote for the Daily Star newspaper that journalists shouldn’t conceive of the conference as a leaders summit. Whether a given president “flies in for a photo opportunity or doesn’t fly in is immaterial to what’s going to happen in the COP,” Huq told me shortly after his column appeared. “But the photo opportunity is what gets the media.” (Inviting leaders was “a typical Boris Johnson ploy,” Huq added, referring to the British prime minister. “He’s showing you a shiny object and distracting you from the reality.”) Huq’s fear that world leaders would overshadow the nitty gritty has materialized, he told me yesterday—though he noted on Twitter that Bangladeshi media, for whom the climate stakes are huge and immediate, are still following the ins and outs of the process. COPs, Huq told me, are almost like two conferences at once: the formal negotiations, and then a “conference of people”—activists, Indigenous groups, businesses, and so on—that is harder for the press to characterize because of its sheer breadth. In recent days, I’ve seen lots of stories about activism at COP; numerous journalists have done an effective job of highlighting the disparities between the views of officials inside the conference center and protesters in the streets, as well as pointing out that many people from poorer countries couldn’t come at all, for reasons including the pandemic and sky-high travel and accommodation costs. But there’s room for the access story, in particular, to be more central. Addressing a demonstration on Friday, Vanessa Nakate, a climate activist from Uganda, said that “while the global south is on the frontlines of the climate crisis, they’re not on the front pages of the world’s newspapers.” Climate justice is, ultimately, the central story in Glasgow. “It’s really easy to focus on numbers and targets: it’s a very transactional and Western way of looking at the world,” Carla F. Fredericks—an enrolled citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation of North Dakota and CEO of the Christensen Fund, who came to COP to advocate for the inclusion of Indigenous rights and perspectives—told me last week. “If you start talking about reducing methane emissions, your average person doesn’t even understand what that means. And the urgency of this crisis is not communicated if it’s communicated through that lens.” Sign up for CJR's daily email As we enter the second week of the conference, questions of climate justice must remain front of mind. Whatever happens, the press—as Harvey, of The Guardian, argued recently—will need to avoid the temptation to frame the outcome as a total success or a total failure, since the reality will certainly be more nuanced; indeed, Huq told me that we should avoid talk of a unified “Glasgow Agreement” entirely, since this COP is about how “we implement the Paris Agreement—which we made six years ago—better: We’re not doing enough; we need to do more; how do we do that?” Of course, continued, top-level media attention is a prerequisite of all this. “It’s usually during the second, closing week of these conferences that the key agreements are or are not reached,” Hertsgaard wrote—so “the true test” for the press “is what comes next.” The many journalists who remain on the ground are still paying attention. Their number now includes me. Early this morning, I walked along the River Clyde from my hotel to the venue, which is comprised of a building that looks a Martian spaceship and a building that looks a bit like an armadillo—though once you’re inside its warren of makeshift halls and tunnels you lose any sense of the architecture. When I got there, there was no line (or portentous visual metaphor); I showed my ID, accreditation, and a negative COVID test (self-reported) to get inside, where I was presented with a reusable water bottle (aluminum), a thick wad of disinfectant wipes (“crisp pear”), and a cool COP26 face mask (Hertsgaard has since mandated that I wear a Covering Climate Now mask). I’m still finding my feet, but for the next four days, I’ll be covering media stories at and around the conference in this newsletter. Tips are very welcome, whether you’re here or not. You can reach me at jallsop@cjr.org. I cannot promise not to make an ABBA joke at some point. Other notable stories, by Mathew Ingram: CJR’s Feven Merid reports that McClatchy—which owns dozens of newspapers across fourteen states, and was acquired by Chatham Asset Management, a hedge fund, last year—will not participate in the next cycle of placements for the Report for America project. A source told Merid that the chain’s decision came in response to comments made earlier this year by Steven Waldman, president and co-founder of Report for America, in an op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times. Waldman said that hedge funds have “a track record of cutting the reporting staff of local newsrooms to increase profits” and that something needs to be done to confront the damage they do to local journalism. Jonathan M. Katz argues in his Substack newsletter The Racket that the New York Times is the “secret weapon” of the far right, because of a propensity to quote conservative operatives as though they were run-of-the-mill US citizens, and to present their arguments in a facile or disingenuous way. “They manufacture the impression of a broad constituency for extreme right-wing ideas, softening the images of actors from far-right militia members to anti-vax vigilantes,” he writes. “They also make the politicians who champion their ideas appear more representative and more popular.” Irena Huang, a data reporter with ProPublica, writes about an investigative reporting project she worked on that documented failures in the US food safety system that allowed the spread of a virulent type of salmonella, which caused tens of thousands of people to become sick. Huang, who did PhD-level work in bioinformatics while pursuing a degree in electrical engineering before becoming a reporter, describes how she was able to trace the salmonella strain by looking at genomic sequencing data. A combination of shrinking supply and other industry constraints has pushed the price of newsprint up around the world, The Economist reports. “European newspapers will have to pay newsprint prices that are 50-70% higher in the first quarter of 2022 compared with the year before,” the magazine says, while publishers in Asia will face price increases of between twenty-five and forty-five percent, and North American prices are already that much higher this year compared with 2020. “It’s like tasering an elderly person who’s already on a pacemaker,” one British newspaper executive told The Economist. A company owned by the Chinese government is working on an offer to acquire Hong Kong’s influential South China Morning Post newspaper, according to a report from Bloomberg. “Bauhinia Culture (Hong Kong) Holdings Ltd. is interested in a deal with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. that would see the city’s most prominent English-language newspaper join its stable of media properties,” the news service reported. Alibaba has come under significant pressure from the Chinese government over the past year to divest some of its media assets, including the Post. The Guardian writes about a messy internal battle for control over Canada’s largest cable and media conglomerate, Rogers Communications, a $20-billion family-owned empire that owns not just cable and telecom assets but also TV networks and sports teams. “Kicked off by an accidental pocket dial that revealed an executive-level coup attempt, the battle has pitted mother against son, ensnared Toronto’s mayor and drawn comparisons to the HBO show Succession,” the newspaper writes. Bentkey Services, the company that owns the conservative website the Daily Wire, has filed a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s employer vaccine mandate in federal court, according to a report from Law and Crime. “The two-page filing itself contains no legal analysis, facts or arguments,” the site says, describing it as a petition filed directly with the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit asking for review of the mandate. “The Daily Wire will not comply with President Biden’s tyrannical vaccine mandate, and we are suing the Biden Administration to put a stop to their gross overreach,” Daily Wire co-founder and co-CEO Jeremy Boreing said in a statement.

• Clean Air & Sustainable Mobility

After clean spell, air quality set to plummet in India's capital

Favourable weather conditions led to a rare drop in pollution in India's capital New Delhi, with residents last month breathing the cleanest air in at least four years but the authorities are warning that air quality is set to drop sharply in November. A delayed end to the monsoon, intermittent rains and a sharp pick-up in wind speeds ensured that the concentration of hazardous, small airborne particles known as PM2.5 in a cubic metre of air averaged 72 in October when air quality typically takes a turn for the worse. That was sharply down from an average concentration of 126 recorded in October 2020 - 25 times over the World Health Organization's safe limit - according to data gathered by the state-run Central Pollution Control Board. But a confluence of factors, including falling temperatures, a drop-off in winter wind speed and farmers preparing to torch farm waste of the previous rice crop to ready the field for planting the wheat crop, is likely to turn the air hazardous. "Because of frequent rains, most farmers didn't get to burn crop stubble, and now they have an even shorter window to dispose of crop waste," said Anumita Roychowdhury, an executive director at the Centre for Science and Environment think tank. "As rains ebb, more and more farmers will rush to burn rice stubble, and that will happen when broader weather patterns will allow pollutants to hang in the air, resulting in a thick smog," Roychowdhury said. Poor air quality over the capital is a reminder of the challenges India faces in reducing pollution as world leaders meet at the United Nations COP26 summit in Scotland to agree on strategies to fight global warming. Adding to the concerns, the Diwali festival of lights falls on Thursday when Indians will set off firecrackers as part of an ancient Hindu tradition. Delhi has banned the sale of firecrackers, but authorities rarely get to enforce such curbs. "The October air was clean, but we're really worried about November," said a senior government official involved in framing policies to curb air pollution. "Stubble burning could peak right after Diwali." Crop waste burning accounts for about a quarter of air pollution in October and November. Since 2018, India has been giving individual farmers a 50% subsidy and farm cooperatives 80% subsidy to buy machines that dispose of rice paddy stubble left out in the field by mechanised harvesters. Despite government subsidies, the machines that collect crop stubble and turn them into mulch are too expensive to buy. Farmers also complain that they need to pay upfront and then claim subsidies later - a process that takes about 10 months. "The Punjab and Haryana governments are responsible for implementing the subsidy programme, and their implementation may be flawed to some extent, but every year more and more farmers are using this equipment to get rid of crop stubble," the government official said, referring to India's two bread basket states. In October this year, crop waste burning came down by 52% against the same month last year, government data showed. In Pakistan's Lahore city, not far from the border with India, the air quality index rose to 341, the worst in the world on Monday, according to IQ Air. On Tuesday, air quality in Pakistan's second-most populous city was 162. In the winter months, industrial and vehicular emissions, smoke from brick kilns and crop fires lead to a sharp spike in air pollution in Lahore, just like in India.

• Climate Change and Green Economy

India’s need for cheap fuel behind its push for compromise on coal at COP26

Even as its capital was blanketed by toxic smog, India led the charge to weaken anti-coal pledges at the COP26 summit, with experts saying it is prioritising its economic growth over the planet's future. Advertising The world's third-largest emitter teamed up with China to water down language on fossil fuels at the Glasgow conference, forcing a compromise: a climate deal that bound countries to "phase down" but not "phase out" coal use. India's resistance to more ambitious curbs on dirty energy is driven by its need for cheap fuel to power a booming economy and lift hundreds of millions of its citizens out of entrenched poverty. "We have a huge population which has still not reached a basic minimum standard of living," Samrat Sengupta, a climate change expert with the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, told AFP. Coal consumption has nearly doubled in the last decade -- only China burns more -- and the fuel still powers 70 percent of India's electricity grid. The government has dragged its feet on tougher regulations for coal plants and just last year announced a series of commercial mining auctions to boost domestic production. Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed to weaning his country off coal, but told Glasgow delegates India would only aim to be carbon-neutral by 2070 -- a decade after China and 20 years after the world's other big emitters. But without decisive action sooner, experts warn India's emissions will soar in coming years and scuttle worldwide efforts to rein in global warming. ‘Stiff target to meet’ The effects of India's fossil fuel addiction are already keenly felt, with a shroud of thick grey haze enveloping New Delhi each winter. Coal plant emissions and vehicle exhaust fumes combine with smoke from farm fires to choke the megacity's 20 million residents. On the same day that COP26 delegates were finalising the global climate accord, Delhi shut its schools for a week to keep children inside. Smog is blamed for more than a million deaths in India annually, and a recent University of Chicago study found that air pollution was likely to reduce life expectancy by more than nine years for four in every 10 Indians. Modi's government aims to mitigate the problem by scaling up renewables, pledging to make solar power as big a share of the energy mix as coal by the end of the decade. But India lacks the high-tech capacity to meet demand for solar panels and relies heavily on expensive components from abroad. It has tried to spur domestic manufacturing of solar tech by hiking import duties, raising the cost of renewable energy. The 2030 solar goal "is a huge and a very stiff target to meet", said Sengupta of the Centre for Science and Environment. "It requires a lot of cheap finance and technologies to be made available." ‘Immense disappointment’ India has long argued that historical polluters such as the United States and Europe are obligated to provide the technical expertise and funding for climate mitigation. Its environment minister told COP26 delegates on Saturday that developing countries were "entitled to the responsible use of fossil fuels". Bhupender Yadav said nations with little historical responsibility for climate change should not be held to the same standards as the world's biggest per-capita emitters. Daily newsletter Receive essential international news every morning Subscribe "In such a situation, how can anyone expect developing countries to make promises of phasing out coal and fossil fuel subsidies?" he asked. The weakened COP26 commitment was adopted with deep reluctance by other nations, which were anxious to get the deal over the line after two weeks of marathon negotiations. Other developing nations -- including Pacific island countries facing the existential threat of rising sea levels as a result of global warming -- bristled at the suggestion that India's last-minute intervention was done on their behalf. Fiji's attorney general Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum expressed "not just our astonishment, but immense disappointment in the manner in which this has been introduced".

• Director General Office

At COP26, Nations Still Have to Do the Heavy Lifting to Mitigate Climate Change

World leaders have come and gone from the much anticipated international climate conference in Glasgow. While they announced some significant commitments to combat the climate crisis, the devil is always in the details. Negotiators must now hammer out the specifics that will determine if COP26 will be written into history as a success or failure. “The first week of COP26 has resulted in a lot of promises to curb the climate crisis,” said Brian Wygal, director of environmental studies and sciences at Adelphi University. “But the world has heard these promises before. … We need actions, not words.” Critics like Greta Thunberg and thousands of other young environmental activists who filled the streets outside the conference charge that the fix is already in. “The leaders are not doing nothing. They are actually creating loopholes, shaping frameworks to benefit themselves to continue profiting from this destructive system,” Thunberg said. After the first week, here are the biggest headlines so far at COP26, known formally as the 26th Conference of the Parties: For the first time, leaders committed to a series of measures that, when combined, would put the world on track to stay below 2 degrees Celsius (below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming, according to research from the University of Melbourne. More than 100 countries signed on to a declaration to end deforestation by 2030. The nations represent 85 percent of the world’s forests. More than 100 countries, including the United States, agreed to cut their methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. More than 40 countries committed to phasing out their coal-burning power plants by the 2030s or 2040s, including heavily coal-reliant countries like Canada, South Korea, Poland, and Indonesia. For the first time, India committed to reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions (albeit not until 2070). India is the world’s fourth largest annual emitter of carbon dioxide. More than 40 nations, including India, China, the United States, the UK, and the members of the EU joined the Glasgow Breakthrough Agenda, agreeing to coordinate the release of clean energy technologies to drive down their cost. Twenty countries, including the United States, promised to end public funding for fossil fuel projects abroad and funnel the money to green energy projects instead. The G-20 agreed to stop financing coal-burning power plants overseas. A group of investors, banks, and insurers with collective control of $130 trillion committed to reaching net-zero emissions across their portfolios by 2050, forming the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. The Global Energy Alliance, a group of international development banks and philanthropic foundations, pledged $10.5 billion to help developing countries transition to renewable energy. The group aims to create 150 million jobs and raise $100 billion for the clean energy transition in the developing world. The UK, EU, US, France, and Germany signed off on the Just Energy Transition Partnership, pledging $8.5 billion to help South Africa shift from coal power to renewables. Overall Climate Ratings, Chart Gambia, in West Africa, is the only nation on target to limit global warming to the recommended 1.5 degrees Celsius. Photo credit: Climate Action Tracker For observers like Patrick Brown, an assistant professor in the department of meteorology and climate science at San Jose State University, the key is not the public pronouncements in Glasgow, but what countries actually do domestically. “Emissions are going to be addressed by domestic policies at the level of each country,” he said, “not pledges at these international meetings where everyone has a social incentive to overpromise and the pledges are nonbinding.” With critical details still left to be sorted out and less than a decade remaining until 2030, the deadline for many emissions-reduction targets, here’s what you need to know about the lofty goals of COP26: Keep 1.5 Alive Preventing the worst effects of climate change by limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) is the goal underpinning all others at COP26, especially because studies have highlighted the tremendous difference an extra half-degree would make. That small difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius is very significant, according to an October report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of the world’s leading climate scientists. For example, with a 1.5-degree rise in temperature, 14 percent of the world’s population would be exposed to severe heat at least once every five years, and an ice-free Arctic summer would happen at least every 100 years. At 2 degrees, those numbers worsen to 37 percent and once every 10 years. The extra half a degree of warming would result in twice as many plant and animal species going extinct. A 1.5-degree temperature increase would kill 70-90 percent of coral reefs, while a 2-degree temperature increase would eliminate almost all the world’s coral reefs. Six years ago, leaders who gathered in Paris did agree to keep warming below 1.5 degrees, but each country was to set its own goals — called nationally determined contributions (NDCs) — for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and responding to the threats of climate change. The first round of NDCs fell short, however, putting the world on track to warm by more than 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. And in the years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, emissions have continued to rise, falling only slightly during the COVID pandemic in 2020. The small West African nation of Gambia is the only country on track to meet the targets it set in Paris, according to Climate Action Tracker. The signatories of the Paris Agreement agreed to submit updated NDCs every five years, and ahead of this year’s conference, 118 countries had done so. Taken together, they covered about 90 percent of the world’s emissions, according to Climate Action Tracker. Heading into the conference, some powerful economies, including the US, UK, EU, and China, submitted stronger NDCs, but others, including Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, and Singapore, had not committed to tougher emissions-reduction targets. Even for those that did commit to strengthening their climate policies at COP26, there is no guarantee that they will make good on their commitments unless an enforcement mechanism is created. “There’s the stated goal that they have at the national level and then what might actually happen, and those are not necessarily the same thing,” said Brown. Cop26, Glasgow, November, 2021 At the Conference of Parties in November, countries may finally establish rules for trading carbon offsets. Photo credit: UK COP26 Ditch Coal UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged all governments and private companies to “end the deadly addiction to coal.” Nearly 40 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions came from the burning of coal in 2019. However, several Asian countries — especially China — stand in the way. Despite its target of reaching carbon neutrality by 2060, China built three times more coal power capacity in 2020 than the rest of the world combined, according to Global Energy Monitor and the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air. China, India, Japan, and the US are notably absent from a COP26 pledge to phase out coal-burning power plants. India, Indonesia, Japan, and Vietnam, along with China, are responsible for 80 percent of the world’s planned new coal plants, according to Carbon Tracker. India, Indonesia, and Vietnam must rely on coal power to pull millions of people out of poverty, but China and Japan, as more developed economies, are in a better position to switch to renewable energy. Encourage Investment in Renewable Energy Since the Paris Agreement was adopted, the price of renewable energy worldwide has fallen significantly, leaving less reason for countries to justify their continued reliance on fossil fuels. The costs of offshore and onshore wind, solar photovoltaic panels, and concentrating solar power (which uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight) all fell substantially in 2020. Solar and Wind Costs Falling Chart Costs for several types of green power are decreasing. PV stands for photovoltaic solar power, which involves semiconductors; CSP for concentrated solar power, in which lenses focus sunlight onto a receiver. Photo credit: Irena The International Renewable Energy Agency found that solar panels are a consistently cheaper form of energy production than new coal- and gas-fired power plants in most places around the world. “Clean energy technologies, particularly wind and solar and battery technologies, have advanced substantially over the last 10 or 20 years, and it really is a different economic investment picture today than it was even five years ago,” said Robert Darrow, a politics instructor at Mount Holyoke College whose research focuses on a clean energy transition. Secure International Finance Developed nations agreed more than a decade ago that by 2020, they would collectively give $100 billion a year to developing nations to help them mitigate — and adapt to — climate change. They fell one-fifth short on that promise in 2019, giving an estimated $79.6 billion. This funding is considered vital to limiting global warming as developing countries have said they are only willing and able to take action with help from the developed world. John Kerry, the US special envoy for climate change, said he was confident developed countries would follow through on their $100 billion promise by 2023. But even $100 billion is not enough, according to Kingsmill Bond, an energy strategist at Carbon Tracker. “It’s actually not very much money in the scheme of what’s required,” he said. “It needs to be seen in the context of a much bigger shift.” Kerry agrees that the $100 billion is just a fraction of what’s needed. He hopes that banks will step up to the plate. “$100 billion doesn’t do it,” he said. “The only way we’re going to get it done is if trillions of dollars are forthcoming, and they are.” This funding is crucial if developing nations are to move quickly toward renewable energy, skipping over the period of heavy reliance on fossil fuels that helped catapult the world’s rich nations to their current status. Developing countries are also pressuring rich nations to pay for their past emissions. “This finance is not charity,” said Sunita Narain, director general of the Centre for Science and Environment, based in New Delhi, India. “This finance is to make sure the polluters pay the cost [of polluting] so the emerging countries can actually do things differently.” In some cases, where the governments of rich countries have left a gap between what they say and what they do, the private sector has stepped up to the plate. The Global Energy Alliance, a group of banks and private foundations, aims to raise $100 billion of its own to help developing countries in the fight against climate change. Global Carbon Dioxide EmissionS, Chart, 1990-2018 Greenhouse gas emissions — in large part from the US, Europe and Central Asia, and East Asia and Pacific nations — have shown few signs of diminishing. Photo credit: EPA Improve Access to Climate Funds At the same time, the world is waking up to the need for improved access to existing climate funds. In March of this year, the Green Climate Fund approved just over $1 billion for 15 climate mitigation and adaptation projects in developing countries. However, only 1.5 percent of the money went directly to institutions in those nations, according to the World Resources Institute. Most of the funds first passed through institutions like the United Nations Development Programme or the World Bank before being dispersed. Not only does this delay the projects, it also shifts control of development efforts away from the countries that should benefit from them. “The reality is that we’re actually taking choice and autonomy away from the societies we’re trying to help. A lot of times we’re pushing policies that are not locally appropriate or helpful,” said Daniel Beers, an associate professor in the department of justice studies at James Madison University, whose research focuses on global poverty and humanitarian aid. “There’s been a really, really long history of the global north pushing policies that benefited [rich countries] in the name of development or humanitarian aid. I think it’s fundamentally important that you actually put control in the hands of the countries that are trying to address these issues in their own societies.” In response, the UK and Fiji spearheaded the establishment of a taskforce that aims to address the “urgent need to streamline access to climate finance.” They are working alongside Bhutan, Belize, Malawi, Rwanda, Senegal, Germany, Sweden, and the US, as well as the Green Climate Fund and the World Bank, to address these issues. Iron Out Enforcement As historic as the Paris Agreement was, it left plenty of room for improvement. “A big weakness of the Paris Agreement,” said Darrow, is that the commitments agreed to by signatories were essentially voluntary: “There is no enforcement mechanism.” Streamlining the way reductions in carbon emissions are tracked and measured is key to developing a common system so that the world’s nations can hold each other accountable. This is what the organizers of COP26 called finalizing “the Paris rulebook.” Finding a way to enforce targets is critical if the world is to stay below 1.5 degrees of warming. “If we don’t have global rules that will restrain every country, we will find that in every decade there will be a new super-polluter,” said Narain. But ironing out enforcement could be tricky, as developing nations look to rich countries to compensate for their decadeslong emissions. Beers points to the need for historical emitters to do their fair share. “To me, justice looks like the bigger, more powerful countries — not just North America and Europe, but some of the middle-income countries — taking responsibility for the share of the problem that they’ve created and not requiring that small, under-resourced countries make the same changes at the same pace that they will,” he said. Set Rules for International Carbon Markets Delegates have been trying to sort out the rules for international carbon markets since they were originally written into the Paris Agreement. Carbon markets do two things: Encourage countries to do as much as they can to combat climate change (even more than promised in their NDCs) and help countries that are struggling to meet their targets. They do this by allowing countries that have surpassed their commitments to sell credits to countries that have been unable to meet their own targets. If structured correctly, carbon markets can provide incentives to get the world on track to combat climate change. But the rules are complicated, and if delegates fail to work through the nuanced issues of carbon credits, rich countries could end up using them as a way to avoid taking real action. Advance Adaptation Speeding up adaptation efforts is another major issue in the fight against climate change. Take Bangladesh, for example, where more than 10 million people have already become climate migrants, according to Shahriar Alam, the country’s minister for foreign affairs. Bangladesh’s low-lying lands, dense population, poor infrastructure, and heavy reliance on farming put its people at risk, especially when rising seas increase the land’s salt content, wiping out crops. To counter this threat, Bangladeshi farmers have been experimenting with more salt-resistant strains of rice and developing innovative solutions like floating seedbeds. Half a world away, the Netherlands is also experiencing sea level rise and flooding, which threaten to leave the country entirely underwater sometime in the next century. The Dutch, however, have employed a number of innovative solutions to keep rising seas at bay. In January, the two countries, joined by the UK, Egypt, Malawi, Saint Lucia, and the UNDP, formed the Adaptation Action Coalition, which has grown to 38 member countries. The group aims to “accelerate global action on adaptation to achieve a climate-resilient world by 2030.” Among possible adaptations: improving early warning systems, building more resilient infrastructure, boosting flood defenses, and restoring natural habitats. Joe Biden, New Jersey President Joe Biden speaks at a Build Back Better event in New Jersey ahead of his trip to Europe for the G-20 and COP26 meetings. Photo credit: Phil Murphy / Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0) The US in the Spotlight President Joe Biden has had to patch up America’s reputation at COP26, as the US is the only country to have left and rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement. In his speech on November 1, he apologized to the world for his predecessor’s decision to pull the United States from the Paris Agreement. “There’s a lot of skepticism from the global community about the United States right now, so [Biden is] kind of paddling upstream against that,” said Darrow, who explained that the nation’s dramatic shift in climate policy under Donald Trump left the rest of the world wondering if it could revert back to its old stance with the next president. Biden has attempted to strengthen the nation’s climate action by announcing a goal to be carbon neutral by 2050. He has also introduced legislation that includes substantial funds to fight climate change in the US. Congress recently passed an infrastructure bill, including $47 billion in funds for climate resilience, which will help Americans prepare for the rising number of extreme weather events. A larger spending bill including more than $500 billion for efforts to fight climate change remains in limbo. This bill includes $320 billion in tax credits for renewable energy development.

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India’s new climate commitments will be a bold, ambitious and a challenge said Expert

At COP26, India’s announcement to become carbon neutral by 2070, reveals that it has committed itself to decisive action to curb runaway greenhouse gas emissions from mid-century. At the 26th Conference of Parties (CoP26), Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared a five-fold strategy termed as the panchamrita to achieve this feat. These five points include: India will get its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030 India will meet 50 percent of its energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030 India will reduce the total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes from now onwards till 2030 By 2030, India will reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by less than 45 percent So, by the year 2070, India will achieve the target of Net Zero Also Read: #COP26: India’s Grandstanding, Poor Implementing At COP26, India’s announcement to become carbon neutral by 2070, reveals that it has committed itself to decisive action to curb runaway greenhouse gas emissions from mid-century. It will become clear only after India submits its updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) which gives out the details on how exactly it plans to go about achieving these targets. Net-zero is when a country’s carbon emissions are offset by taking out equivalent carbon from the atmosphere so that emissions in balance are zero. In terms of Peaking year, Peaking year is achieving net-zero by a specific date means specifying a year after which emissions will start to reduce. For instance, China has announced the peaking year of 2030 for a purported net-zero emissions year of 2060. The U.S. had the peaking year of 2007 and expects to be net-zero by 2050. The United Kingdom peaked in 1973 but expects to be net-zero only by 2050. Though there is no clarity yet from the government, experts in the run-up to COP26 have wrestled with these questions. India’s climate change targets are laudable and put the ball firmly in the court of the already rich world to now show that they mean business. This is because India has not been a historical contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions from 1870 to 2019, its emissions have added up to a minuscule 4 percent of the global total. India’s Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has done a projection for the country’s energy mix for 2030. A study suggested that for a 2070 net-zero year and peaking year of 2040, India would have to reduce the emissions intensity (emissions per unit GDP) by 85% — it has so far reduced it to 24% from 2005 levels. The share of non-hydro Renewable Energy has to increase to 65% from the 11% today; the share of electric cars in passenger sales has to go from 0.1% today to 75% by 2040, and the share of fossil energy in primary energy has to decrease from 73% to 40%. For the peaking year of 2030, these targets would be stiffer, by analyst Vaibhav Chaturvedi, at the Council for Energy, Environment and Water in March 2021. In terms of Renewable energy, India, as part of its NDC in 2015, had committed itself to installing 175 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2022. Till 28 February 2021, the country had achieved 94 GW, comprising a 25 percent share in total installed capacity for power generation. If large hydro installed capacity is included (45 GW by February 2021), then India’s non-fossil energy capacity is 139 GW — close to 38 percent of installed capacity — according to the Centre for Science and Environment. Diplomatic compulsions likely forced India to announce a net-zero date as it was the only one among major economies not to have specified a net-zero year until now. India, however, should have said that it will reach net zero by 2070, only if other developed countries themselves commit to reaching net-zero before 2050. “The net-zero pledge will be much less consequential to what India actually does than the detailed sub-pledges. ”PM Modi’s plans to decarbonize the Indian Railways by 2030 was a good example of how India ought to be demonstrating change at a sectoral level and that in turn would be more politically palatable than making huge transformations, said Navroz Dubash, Professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. In terms of Carbon dioxide reduction, there is also no clarity on how many of the announced targets are unconditional and how many are conditional. At the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks, wealthy nations promised US$100 billion a year in climate finance to developing nations by 2020. But that goal has not been met. “The statement on the required $1 trillion in finance suggests that India is telling the developed countries we are watching you on providing finance, the way you are watching us on emissions,” said Prof. Dubash. He added that a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide reduction in the next decade also needed more clarity. A billion tonnes would be premised on a reference point that shows what the emissions would be in a business-as-usual scenario. “We don’t yet know what scenario has been considered. This is the time we should have more careful and broad modeling over a consistent period to detail our emission trajectories towards 2030,” he noted. Sunita Narain, Director-General, CSE said, “India’s national targets are bold and ambitious, and will be immensely challenging as well to achieve. Going by our comparatively low contribution to global emissions and considering that our economy needs to grow and meet the energy needs of millions of poor citizens, we did not need to make such an ambitious pledge. But these are a challenge to the already rich world to step up the time for procrastination is over,”. Source: The Hindu, Down to Earth

• Clean Air & Sustainable Mobility

Gurgaon’s pollution level ‘severe’ for the second day in a row

Gurgaon: A thick blanket of smog continued to engulf the city as the 24-hour average air quality index (AQI) across several monitoring stations was recorded at the ‘severe’ category for the second consecutive day on Saturday. The air quality, however, improved slightly due to higher wind speed and is expected to further flush out pollutants from Sunday onwards, weather experts said. According to Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB), the city’s air quality index (AQI) stood at 456 on Saturday. Due to rampant bursting of crackers on Diwali on Thursday despite restrictions, coupled with a rise in incidents of stubble burning, the city’s AQI had slipped to the ‘severe’ category to reach 472 on Friday. An AQI between 401 and 500 is considered ‘severe’. On Saturday, Vikas Sadan, Sector 51 and Teri Gram air monitoring stations recorded AQIs at 492, 499 and 419, respectively. Statistics for the Gwal Pahari centre was not available because of insufficient data. Congratulations! You have successfully cast your vote The Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB), however, predicted that the pollutants would clear out of the city’s air as wind speed had picked up since Saturday evening. On Saturday, the average speed was recorded at six kilometres per hour (km/hr), up from the three km/hr a day ago. Besides calm winds, unfavourable weather conditions like low temperature and low mixing height had also degraded the city’s air quality over the last few days, experts said. According to India Meteorological Department (IMD), Gurgaon’s minimum temperature was recorded at 16 degrees Celsius and maximum at 26.2 degrees on Saturday. Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director, research and advocacy at CSE, meanwhile, told TOI that stubble burning had also added to Gurgaon’s air pollution. “We do not have any mechanism in place to check the contribution of stubble burning share in Gurgaon’s air quality at the moment, but of course it is affecting the district’s AQI as we have data that it is clearly impacting Delhi’s air,” Roychowdhury said. The civic authorities, meanwhile, said they have upped pollution mitigation measures by sprinkling water on roads and continuing night patrolling. “We have urged corporates and RWAs to start sprinkling water across Gurgaon,” Kuldeep Singh, HSPCB regional officer, said. Delhi’s air quality may see an improvement, too, with IMD forecasting strong surface winds at 20-30 kmph on Sunday. System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR), a pollution monitoring body under the Union ministry of earth sciences, said, “Delhi’s AQI is likely to improve to upper end of ‘very poor’ category as surface winds are becoming stronger, dispersing air pollutants. Strong north-westerly winds enhance transport of emissions from stubble burning. Share of crop residue burning emissions in PM2.5 is 41% (Effective fire count 5,159).” The CPCB’s central control room data showed that Delhi-NCR's average 24-hour PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations were 429 micrograms per cubic metre and 298 micrograms per cubic metre, respectively, at 7pm.

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Ord mot ord: Västvärlden bör betala klimatnotan

Världen genomgår en gemensam, livsnödvändig omställning till grön energi. Men när klimatkalkylen är på agendan under toppmötet, slåss länderna om vem ska stå för notan. "Det är världens fattigaste folk som faller offer för klimatförändringarna i dag. Utan att de har bidragit till problemet." Påståendet kommer från den indiske klimatforskaren och aktivisten Sunita Narain, som därmed sätter en av de största agendorna för COP26 på sin spets. Det internationella klimattoppmötet, som inleddes den 31 oktober i Glasgow, väntas huvudsakligen kretsa kring vem som ska betala räkningen för omställningen till en mer klimatvänlig världsordning. Indien, Honduras, Libyen och andra utvecklingsländer lägger fram sitt enkla argument som så: Varför ska vi betala för en grön omställning när världens rikaste länder tjänade stora pengar på att skita ned överallt utan någon som helst eftertanke eller omtanke?

• Clean Air & Sustainable Mobility

Delhi picks its poison as ban goes up in smoke

• Clean Air & Sustainable Mobility

Manesar sees highest spike in pollutants day after Diwali

Gurgaon: An analysis of data obtained from the city’s five air monitoring stations has revealed that Manesar witnessed the highest spike in the air quality index (AQI) post Diwali at 33.3%. After Manesar, the Gwalpahari station witnessed the highest spike on Friday compared to the previous day (29%), followed by Teri Gram (27.8%), Vikas Sadan (26%) and Sector 51 (8%). At the Manesar station on Friday, the AQI was recorded at 472. It stood at 478 at Teri Gram, 473 at Gwalpahari, 466 at Vikas Sadan and 464 at Sector 51, all ‘severe’. A day ago, it was 354 at Manesar, 374 at Teri Gram, 366 at Gwalpahari and 369 at Vikas Sadan, all ‘very poor’. Sector 51 reported ‘severe’ AQI at 425 on Thursday. While PM2.5 and PM10 were the most prominent contributors to air pollution on Friday, there was a high presence of toxic pollutants like ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur oxide as well in all five stations. In Teri Gram, the PM2.5 level stood at 477 on Friday, while PM10 was 447. In Sector 51, the PM2.5 was 422 after Diwali and PM10 was 424. The PM2.5 level at Vikas Sadan, which doesn’t monitor PM10, stood at 466. Meanwhile, Gwalpahari saw a PM2.5 level of 475 and PM10 of 424. In Manesar, the PM2.5 level was recorded at 455, while PM10 stood at 359. Congratulations! You have successfully cast your vote Experts said there has been a substantial rise in the level of pollutants a day after Diwali. “Micro-climatic conditions like upwards or downwards wind movement and temperature variations are responsible for accumulation of pollutants at one spot. They are responsible for the deterioration of air quality at a hotspot like Manesar,” Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director (research and advocacy) at Centre for Science and Environment, told TOI. Speaking about other hotspots like Teri Gram, Gwalpahari and Vikas Sadan, she said: “Factors like firecrackers, waste burning and pollution from stubble burning are creating these hotspots.” Experts also stressed that the bursting of crackers intensified the accumulation of PM2.5 in the lower atmosphere in the night hours, which led to peak values of PM2.5 crossing the 1,000 µg/m3 mark at most locations.Smog was visible in the morning and poor wind conditions are delaying dispersion, allowing particulate matter to stay afloat

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Glasgow Summit - A Media Extravaganza

The Glasgow summit on climate change has been a media extravaganza. The ruling elites from all continents cooped up in their national capitals due to the raging pandemic, finally got a break to throw away their masks and take to their private jets to fly off to “Global Britain” to display their leadership qualities. There are some noble exceptions of course — such as Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, etc. which are predominantly low-lying atolls, rising just metres above the waves, who are the world’s moral conscience on climate change. But obscene grandstanding was the leitmotif of the two-day event in Glasgow. They came as if to party, exult in backslapping and enjoy themselves while taking care to impress their domestic audiences that their personalised politics would translate as gains for their countries. Of course, the two star performers were the UK prime minister Boris Johnson and the US president Joe Biden. For Johnson, the impressive attendance of almost 100 world leaders served to proclaim that Britain is back in the first league of nations, having successfully survived the Brexit. For the US president Joe Biden, it has been a more complicated story. He had the twin mission of reasserting America’s ability to lead the world as well as to draw synergy out of the summit for himself politically at a juncture when the coalition that propelled Democrats to power and himself to the presidency in 2020 seems to have collapsed and there are growing doubts within the party about his ability to push his domestic agenda across the finish line. read more The Glasgow summit witnessed a lack of consensus among world leaders on how to move forward globally on climate change. They presented competing ideas but on core issues there was no consensus — such as the rich countries redeeming their pledge to help poor countries pivot away from fossil fuels. In Copenhagen, at COP15 in 2009, countries came together and said they would provide $100bn per year and would reach that target by 2020. They abysmally failed to meet the target. Arguably, in many ways the success of the Glasgow summit will depend on the issue of financial support. The only tangible outcomes at Glasgow are the two agreements to reduce methane gas emissions and protect the world’s forests. These are low-hanging fruits but are nonetheless two most effective strategies to keep the goal of limiting warming to 1.5˚C within reach while yielding co-benefits including improving public health and agricultural productivity. Over 100 countries representing over 40% of global methane emissions and over two thirds of global GDP are on board The Global Methane Pledge launched on Tuesday in Glasgow, which is a collective effort to reduce global methane emissions at least 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030, which could eliminate over 0.2˚C warming by 2050. However, there were notable absentees from those signing on, including some major methane polluters like China, Russia, Australia and India. Again, more than 100 countries pledged on Tuesday to end deforestation by 2030, agreeing to a sweeping accord aimed at protecting some 85 percent of the world’s forests. There is no gainsaying the fact that the accord is crucial to absorbing carbon dioxide and slowing the rise in global temperatures. Again, India happens to be among the countries that dissociated from the accord on curbing deforestation. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his statement made some sensational announcements. The five pledges Modi made are that India will: - increase non-fossil energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030; - meet 50% of energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030; - reduce the total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes from now to 2030; - reduce by 2030 the carbon intensity of the economy by 45% (from the previous target of 35%); and, - achieve the net-zero target by 2070. Taken together, this will pose a gigantic transformation of India’s climate commitment through the next 8-year period but will involve huge mobilisation of resources. The noted expert on climate change Sunita Narain aptly used a metaphor to estimate that Modi has assumed an impossible challenge of “not just walking the talk but running it”. An International Energy Agency report in February titled India Energy Outlook 2021 estimates that the country will need to spend an additional $1.4 trillion to adopt clean energy technologies and be on a sustainable trajectory over the next twenty years. The investment is around 70% higher than what the government had envisaged. The report noted that the transformation would require massive advances in innovation, strong partnerships and vast amounts of capital. Only few countries have dared to put their carbon reduction path in such terms in the near term, as Modi has done. Certainly, no country from the industrialised world has done it! Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by wanting to be one up on China? Who are we trying to impress? There are no easy answers. Besides, as Narain noted, Modi’s announcement quintessentially means that India is capping future growth in the coal industry. “The big issue will be to ensure that growth is equitable, and the poor are not denied their right to development in this energy future. As we set out ourselves the goal to grow without pollution, we must work on increasingly clean, but affordable, energy for the poor,” Narain wrote. Finally, the target of net-zero by 2070. What is intriguing is that as recently as on October 28, India had rejected calls to announce a net zero carbon emissions target and maintained that it was more important for the world to lay out a pathway to reduce such emissions. The environment secretary R.P. Gupta told reporters in Delhi, “It is how much carbon you are going to put in the atmosphere before reaching net zero that is more important.” But by November 1, India did an extraordinary volte-face by announcing at Glasgow that 2070 is the target for India to reach net zero carbon emissions. The zest to make dramatic announcements before an elite world audience probably got the better of our judgment. The Russian presidential envoy on climate issues Ruslan Edelgeriyev characterised the Glasgow summit as a “race of ambitions”. He told Tass that the ambitious goals of some countries are “not underpinned by (clear) roadmaps and scientific data” and are based on “unjustified hopes for the emergence of new technologies.” Russia recently assumed 2060 as its net zero target, basing its decision on “scientific evidence and calculations.” But Edelgeriyev said that reaching the net zero target even before 2060 is possible, provided a “favourable domestic and international environment” is available. He cited the Western sanctions against Russian state-owned corporations. Besides, there are obstacles such as the opposition to declare nuclear power as a low carbon source of energy. Russia hosts about 20% of the total area of global forests, and thus it fully supports the Glasgow declaration on forests and land use. But Russia would have liked also to consider forestation as valid “green projects” to offset CO2 emissions.

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How Modi’s announcement became the biggest buzz at climate change summit

It was a closely guarded secret, and officials in the environment ministry threw red herrings all the time. While almost everyone knew Prime Minister Narendra Modi would make a big announcement, true to style, in Glasgow, there was speculation on what this would be. Would he talk about India’s Energy Swaraj by 2047 as the additional commitment or would the transcontinental solar global green grid be the big thing? So, when he announced India’s commitment to reach net-zero (emissions) by 2070, everyone did a double take. India had finally bitten the bullet, or had it? Modi’s speech was in the late afternoon when a certain drowsiness had enveloped the summit, and not just US President Joe Biden. The announcement roused everyone into exclamations and discussions, and it remained the biggest buzz at the World Leaders Summit at the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP26), putting aside the doomsday prophecies that were earlier dominating the narrative. The year 2070 is half a century away, and two decades behind the global north’s clarion of a 2050 deadline; none of the leaders of today are likely to be around then to call each other out. Yet, Modi’s big announcement, along with a slew of others—with 2030 as the deadline for a 45 per cent less carbon-intensive economy, a 50 per cent renewable component in the energy mix and the Indian Railways going totally powered by renewables—brought in relieved praise from India’s bilateral buddy and COP26 host, the United Kingdom. It was a commitment they wanted to this new fancy of theirs, net-zero emissions. Though India has maintained that net-zero emissions alone do not solve the climate crisis, it made the needed commitment. India’s 2070 target seems ridiculous and unambitious at first, but it might actually be closer to being met than the bigger claims other nations have given. Modi’s announcement is ambiguous on whether the net-zero is for carbon emissions or all greenhouse gases, but there is no ambiguity in the trajectory India has taken towards tackling climate change. As Modi pointed out once again, it is the only G20 country on track to meet the commitments it had made in Paris in 2015. “Countries like ours cannot stick to western deadlines; none of us in south Asia can think of removing coal anytime soon; we have to set targets doable for us,” noted Ahmad Kamruzzaman Majumder, an environmental science professor from Dhaka. “We are a global force in carbon emissions, we need to have a plan to bring it down. Yet, given India’s so far rigid stance against net neutrality, the announcement did come as a surprise,” said Anjal Prakash, lead author of the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Since China had given a 2060 deadline, India’s 2070 is natural, though we, too, could have accelerated it by a decade.” Sunita Narain, director, Centre for Science and Environment, said that given India’s comparatively low per capita contribution to global emissions and the energy needs of the country, we did not have to make these announcements, but we did, and now this should be a challenge to the already rich world to step up their act. She said that India’s net-zero target matched the commitment of the already industrialised countries, but for the world to reach the 2050 deadline, the west should get there by 2030 and China by 2040. Speaking, as he said, on behalf of the developing world, Modi took up the issue of climate financing. While other leaders made emphatic reminders of the $100 billion commitment pledged a dozen years ago by the developed world, Modi took it a step further, demanding a scale-up of the climate finance ambition in return for scaled-up climate action commitments. India alone needs a trillion US dollars at the earliest, he said. The demand from countries to see the pledged finances on the table reached a crescendo over the two days of the leaders’ summit. Will it shame the developed world into reaching for their wallets finally? They are realising that the pledge has now become an issue of their sincerity to the cause of climate. Talking heads: US President Joe Biden speaks with Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi and Gabon’s President Ali Bongo Ondimba during the COP26 summit | Reuters Talking heads: US President Joe Biden speaks with Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi and Gabon’s President Ali Bongo Ondimba during the COP26 summit | Reuters French President Emmanuel Macron called the $100 billion fund delivery the second big objective of the summit, the first being the scaled-up ambition to keep temperature rise within 1.5°C of the pre-industrialised normal. In Paris, in 2015, the consensus was to keep the outer limit at 2°C. The new target means bringing down greenhouse gas emissions even more rapidly now. Finances aside, the sincerity of the rich is under question as they often stray away from the talk. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a late but enthusiastic entrant to climate concern, but his demands that the world do more are being juxtaposed against his own domestic decisions—giving subsidies to domestic flights, and even the assessment for a new colliery in Cumbria even as the UK announced it would not finance coal projects overseas. Biden announced a quadrupling of US funds for the $100 billion pledge, launched a Build Back Better roundtable and spoke about the American “obligation to help” other countries in making a clean energy transition. The impunity with which the US walks out and back into treaties with leadership changes, however, does not inspire hope in continuity. The many fractures in the world became apparent as around 120 world leaders gathered together. While the poorer nations called out their richer cousins over the money and technology they had promised but did not give, within the developed world itself, the squabbling became personal. Macron and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison continued their rancour from Rome, where they reportedly came down to name-calling. France cannot forgive Australia for rejecting their submarine deal and ganging up with the British and Americans as AUKUS. Macron and Johnson shared an uneasy body language, too, though their squabble over fishing in the English Channel finally de-escalated when France decided to withhold sanctions against British fish exports for the present. This tiff underscored the zealousness with which nations protect their natural resources from others. Will they be able to win against climate change, too? China called out the organisers for deliberately scuttling President Xi Jinping’s address. Biden accused big emitters, China and Russia, of walking out of climate change, conveniently forgetting US behaviour under Donald Trump. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided to skip the event at the last moment; no explanations were given. It was not surprising then that the youth, both within the venue as well as outside, felt that the leaders were not sincere about climate change. Youth icon and climate crusader Greta Thunberg, who was not invited to the meet, had crowds thronging her event in the city, where she sang a string of swear words against politicians. Just how it helped the cause of climate change remains unclear. Within the event, India Logan-Riley, a Maori climate activist from New Zealand, said, “I am the same age as the negotiations. I have grown up, graduated, have fallen in love and out of it, all while the global north fudges with the future.” The climate in Glasgow is certainly fraught. What will emerge from the remaining days of negotiations? A new mantra? Some diplomatically cobbled consensus like the document that emerged from the G20 meet, and which does not really say much? COP26 president Alok Sharma said that while Paris pledged, Glasgow must deliver. Deliver ‘what’, however, remains the question. Carbon cut? Or, could he have meant cash and tech?

• Clean Air & Sustainable Mobility

Diwali Pollution Record: बिना प्रदूषण वाली दिवाली दिल्ली से फिर रह गई दूर, 6 साल में सबसे प्रदूषित 2021 की दिवाली

नई दिल्ली: एक्यूआई सिस्टम आने के बाद 2021 की दिवाली सबसे प्रदूषित दिवाली हो गई है। देश में सबसे प्रदूषित स्थान नोएडा रहा। दूसरे नंबर पर गुरुग्राम रहा। राजधानी का एक्यूआई 462 दर्ज हुआ। हेल्थ की इस इमरजेंसी ने अच्छे लोगों को भी हांफने पर मजबूर कर दिया है। आतिशबाजी के साथ उत्तर भारत में पराली जलाना और हवाओं की सुस्त रफ्तार इसकी वजह रही। शुक्रवार को दिल्ली का एक्यूआई 462 रहा। राजधानी के कई इलाकों ने प्रदूषण के मामले में नोएडा को पीछे छोड़ दिया। नोएडा का एक्यूआई 475 रहा। राजधानी में अलीपुर का एक्यूआई 476, पंजाबी बाग का 479, नेहरू नगर 479, सोनिया विहार का 486, जहांगीरपुरी का 485, रोहिणी का 479, विवेक विहार का 483, नरेला का 482, वजीरपुर का 476, मुंडका का एक्यूआई 479 रहा। इसके अलावा, भी कई इलाकों में एक्यूआई 401 से ऊपर रहा। यह गंभीर श्रेणी है। दूसरे नंबर पर रहे गुरुग्राम का एक्यूआई 472, तीसरे नंबर पर रहे गाजियाबाद का एक्यूआई 470 था। सेंटर फॉर साइंस एंड एनवायरनमेंट की अनुमिता रॉयचौधरी के अनुसार इस बार हवाएं काफी धीमी हो गई थीं। हवाएं पराली के धुएं को राजधानी की तरफ धकेल रही थीं। आतिशबाजी भी राजधानी में हुई है। इन्हीं तीन वजहों से राजधानी का दम घुटा है। काउंसिल ऑन एनर्जी, एनवायरनमेंट एंड वॉटर की प्रोग्राम लीड तनुश्री गांगुली ने बताया कि इस सीजन में पहली बार 4 नवंबर की शाम को राजधानी गंभीर स्थिति में पहुंची है। दिवाली की रात लगभग सभी मॉनिटरिंग स्टेशनों में पीएम 2.5 में तेजी से उछाल आया है। रात 10 बजे 250 एमजीसीएम से यह बढ़कर 600 एमजीसीएम तक पहुंच गया। इसी तरह पीएम 10 भी 300 एमजीसीएम से बढ़कर 700 एमजीसीएम तक पहुंच गया। रात एक बजे यह सबसे अधिक 836 एमजीसीएम दर्ज हुआ। यह इस बात का सबूत है कि पटाखे जलाने से प्रदूषण बढ़ा है। बीते तीन दिनों से दिल्ली की हवा की वजह से पराली प्रदूषण 10 प्रतिशत से भी कम था। काउंसिल की प्रोग्राम असोसिएट एल. एस. कुरिंजी के अनुसार, गुरुवार को अकेले पंजाब और हरियाणा में 3500 जगहों पर पराली जली। पिछले तीन दिनों से हवाओं के साथ देने की वजह से पराली जलाने के मामले अधिक होने के बावजूद पराली प्रदूषण 10 प्रतिशत से भी कम था। अब पराली का प्रदूषण बढ़ गया है।

• Clean Air & Sustainable Mobility

After Diwali sparkle, smog engulfs Delhi

ollution level increases due to bursting of firecrackers and stubble burning Delhi’s air quality dipped to its most severe levels due to the bursting of firecrackers during Diwali and stubble burning in adjoining States, with hospitals seeing an increase in the number of patients complaining of respiratory tract problems. The Capital’s air quality is expected to remain well beyond healthy levels till Saturday, but some respite is expected from Sunday. “Delhi recorded the lowest pollution levels in October this year, compared to the last five years. But the pollution level has been increasing for the last three days on account of bursting of firecrackers and an increase in stubble burning,” said Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai. NASA images show that stubble is being burnt at 3,500 places (up from 1,000 in last week of October) on Friday. “A huge chunk of Delhi’s population did not burst crackers, but some people did it intentionally because of which the pollution levels have increased.” On Thursday evening (Diwali day), the overall air quality of Delhi plunged into the upper end of the ‘very poor category’ as predicted by the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR). SAFAR has predicted that relief is expected only from the evening of November 7, but the Air Quality Index (AQI) will fluctuate within the ‘very poor’ range. According to SAFAR, firework emissions on Diwali night degraded the air quality from ‘very poor’ to ‘severe category’ as predicted by SAFAR. The share of stubble emissions peaked on Friday at 36 per cent, and will touch approximately 40 per cent on November 6 and 7. It further added that the share of PM 2.5 pollutants is higher when compared to 2020, but much lesser than 2018. However, it may be noted that local winds have picked up since morning and fast dispersion is expected. Without any more firecracker emissions, AQI is likely to improve to the ‘very poor’ category by Friday night, although stubble contribution is expected to remain almost the same. “From Sunday onwards the winds will increase, which will dismiss the accumulation of pollution and it will come down to the very poor category in Delhi. “Besides, if there is heavy rain — which is highly unlikely as of now — the pollution can come to moderate category as well,” said BS Murthy, Project Director at SAFAR. According to the Central Pollution Control Board data, as of 3 pm on Friday, most of the areas of the National Capital had an AQI level above 450. “This year the month of October was cleaner compared to previous years, but in November as the winter started setting in, the air quality has deteriorated,” said Anumita Roy Chowdhury, Executive Director-Research, Centre for Science and Environment, adding that farm fires and crackers are the primary triggers of rising pollution in the Capital. Takes a toll on health Hospitals saw people turning up with asthma and breathing difficulties. “As usual, this Diwali also the air quality is becoming poor. There is already a rise in number of respiratory problems such as viral pneumonia, asthma, COPD attacks and chest infections. They present with breathing difficulty, cough, fever, increased sputum and sleep disturbances. People should wear masks, continue preventive therapies and consider vaccination for flu and pneumonia after consulting a doctor. “They should restrict outdoor activities to minimum. Avoid running and strenuous exercises outside if the air quality is poor. Avoid cold beverages. Also quit smoking,” said Dr Manoj Goel, Director, Pulmonology, Fortis Memorial Research Institute.

• Director General Office

Reaching net zero by 2070 is possible – but it’s what India does right now that matters

Amazement, elation, worry, disappointment, derision – the announcement by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, that the country would reach net zero carbon emissions by 2070 has provoked all kinds of reaction across the spectrum. India is the world’s fourth largest greenhouse gas polluter after China, the US and the EU. It has far lower emissions per head than the other three and already has a highly ambitious solar programme. At the same time, it depends on coal for two-thirds of its energy generation, and is projected to increase its emissions in the next couple of decades as millions move out of poverty and increase their electricity use. The contradictions make for a complicated relationship with emissions, but what is clear is that Indians are experiencing the climate crisis here and now, through more frequent and more intense storms, floods and droughts; from a rising sea that is already decimating farms along the coast and forcing people in the region to drink saltwater; from monsoon anomalies that lead to cloudbursts and therefore flash floods and landslides in the Himalayas and other mountains. Sunil Kandar, a resident of Ghoramara island. ‘The island has been shrinking’: living on the frontline of global heating Read more As scientists from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have repeatedly pointed out, the world’s emissions must reach net zero by 2050 to control these crises. As part of that, India needs to curb emissions for its own sake, while it reminds rich nations of the importance of climate justice during negotiations. The announcement of its own net zero year has brought relief to the American, British and European climate diplomats who have been pushing India on this; it has elated solar and e-vehicle entrepreneurs; and it has drawn criticism from those who misread the global goal (2050) as the net zero year for every country, ignoring that rich nations – that have placed most of the extra carbon in the atmosphere – have to get there first. The net zero goal has serious critics in India, who see it as an attempt by rich nations to shift the goalposts into the future rather than act now. Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment reacted to Modi’s speech by arguing that: “OECD countries should get [to net zero] by 2030 and China by 2040.” Her argument is based on climate justice and the fundamental principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” in the UN framework. India has been repeatedly asking developed countries to spell out their plans for this decade, and Modi outlined India’s short-term goals before he got to the net zero target in his speech at the Cop26 world leaders’ summit. The point is that India – and all countries – can demonstrate their seriousness by how they act now. Narendra Modi vows India will reduce emissions to net zero by 2070 – video 01:22 Narendra Modi vows India will reduce emissions to net zero by 2070 – video Advertisement Modi’s big pledge for this decade is to increase installed generation capacity using renewables to 500 gigawatts by 2030. If this is achieved, it will mean renewable energy will account for 50% of installed capacity and carbon emissions will go down by a billion tonnes. Modi’s other announcement was that India would reduce the carbon intensity of its emissions per unit of production by more than 45% by 2030, compared with 2005, something that Indian industry is on track to achieve anyway as it increases efficiency. The big question right now is where these 500GW of renewable energy will come from? India’s installed renewables capacity – excluding large hydro – crossed the 100GW mark this August, according to power minister R K Singh. India’s Central Electricity Authority earlier projected that the country’s installed generation capacity by the end of the decade would be 817GW, of which 525GW would be through non-fossil fuels. The bulk of this would be from solar (280GW), followed by wind power (140GW) and hydro (71GW). Srinivas Krishnaswamy, of the New Delhi based thinktank Vasudha Foundation, said in a statement that this target is more ambitious “than what would be achieved solely through market factors and the falling prices of renewable energy. Massive support and [a policy push] is required for carbon-free electricity standards, investments in ramping up storage capacity, improving the health of power distribution companies, grid stability, net metering etc.” The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, and India's Narendra Modi holding hands next to climate change sign Is India’s pledge of net zero by 2070 an ambitious target – or worthless words? Read more As usual, when it comes to implementation, there will be many devils in the details. There is support for renewable energy across India’s political spectrum, but solar installations cannot be ramped up to the required level without installing panels on thousands and thousands of rooftops. This is lagging woefully behind schedule, firstly due to passive resistance from utility companies scared that their revenues will be affected, and secondly due to a plethora of antiquated local rules on who owns the rooftops of apartment buildings. A lot of this will come down to the actions of state governments. The other big problem will be to take along the myriad micro, small and medium factories that comprise more than 80% of India’s industrial sector. They rarely have the money or the will to invest even in efficiency measures, though they know very well they will make a saving in the long run by doing so. This sector will need many carrots, and perhaps some sticks, before it comes along. Vaibhav Chaturvedi of the Council for Energy, Environment and Water, another thinktank based in New Delhi, observed that India’s emissions will rise for at least the next two decades despite the 500 GW renewables goal, though nonetheless thinks this will be compatible with the 2070 net zero target. India’s coal use will have to peak by 2040 to meet the goal. Though, whatever happens in India, most attention will be on the EU and US. As Chaturvedi said: “The burden of action now lies on the developed world to [advance] their net zero pledges to ensure a 1.5C-compatible world.” In general, the analysts’ conclusions are that it will be tough but possible to do what India has promised – but bigger polluters need to do better. Modi also used his speech in Glasgow to reiterate that the rich world needs to keep its promises on climate finance. He not only wanted a trillion dollars a year for poor nations, but also an international monitoring system to keep track of how these promises are being kept – or how they aren’t. Joydeep Gupta is south Asia director at the Third Pole, an environmental news website focusing on the Himalayan region and South Asia … as you're joining us today from India, we have a small favour to ask. With the world's eyes on the crucial UN climate summit, the Guardian will bring you the facts, negotiations, news and science. For years, climate experts have stressed that Guardian reporting - independent, rigorous, persistent and open to all - is a critical tool to confront the climate crisis, which is intensifying around the world. Leaders, influenced by powerful lobbies, are now set to make decisions that will determine our future. We have no shareholders and no billionaire owner. Just the determination and passion to deliver high-impact reporting for the world, always free from commercial and political influence. Reporting like this is vital for democracy, for fairness and to demand better from the powerful. And we provide all this for free, for everyone, regardless of their ability to pay for it. As such, tens of millions have placed their trust in us for the last 200 years, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. With more than 1.5 million supporters in 180 countries, our model for open access journalism is better sustained, meaning we can reach more people. 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• Director General Office

India's Pledge at COP26 on Point. But Need of the Hour is Focus on Rapid Relief from Toxic Air

Environment experts have lauded India for doing more than most countries, including China, and reducing emissions. According to them, the country’s pledge at COP26 to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2070 is “real climate action". The promises made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to tackle climate change at the 26th international climate conference in Glasgow included achieving carbon neutrality by 2070. While the experts said that by making the pledge, India has put the ball in the court of developed nations to fulfil the promise $1 trillion of climate finance, the move does not bring relief from the immediate problem of toxic air that the people, especially those in the national capital, are having to breath in. The Air Quality Index deteriorates to a new low each year around the months of October-December as stubble burning from neighbouring states intensifies and people violate norms and burst firecrackers to celebrate the festival of Diwali. This year, too, despite a Supreme Court order, several appeals by the Delhi government and other efforts in place to keep a check on bursting of firecrackers during Diwali, several areas in the city reported violations as people burst crackers all through Thursday. On Friday morning, Delhiites woke up to a thick blanket of smog and a worrying AQI of 617. People from several parts of the city and its suburbs complained of itchy throat and watery eyes. The city’s overall air quality index was 451 at 8 am and entered the “severe" category, according to the Ministry of Earth Sciences’ air quality forecast agency System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR). At around 3am, the air quality at Janpath in Delhi was in ‘hazardous’ category with PM2.5 at 655.07. Modi, The Economist said in a piece on Friday, highlighted at Glasgow that while poor countries bear a mere fraction of the blame for creating the world’s climate mess, some, such as India, have done better at keeping environmental commitments than many rich countries. As per the report, India, with 18% of the world’s population, is estimated to have caused just 3% of accumulated CO2 emissions. Yet even as Indian leaders repeatedly—and sometimes justifiably—take the moral high ground on climate change’s long-term challenges, their people continue to suffer and die from its immediate, home-grown causes, it says. The Economist further points out that the problem is not faced by Delhi alone. “In winter the Himalayas trap the combined exhaust of the 600m people who populate the sprawling Indo-Gangetic Plain. From diesel pumps for irrigation to cremation pyres and from coal-fired power plants to gas-guzzling suvs, the smoke combines in a toxic stew that can hang for weeks in the season’s typically windless conditions. Big provincial cities such as Lucknow and Patna are just as sooty as Delhi. So are many rural areas,” it says. Climate change activist and director general of Centre for Science and Environment Sunita Narain has said that India has laid out its roadmap, and targets of non-fossil fuel, renewable energy (RE) and reduction of carbon intensity are all pathways to get one billion tonnes carbon emission reduction by 2030. “RE target of 50 per cent, non-fossil fuel 500 GW; carbon intensity of 45 per cent are all pathways to get to 1 billion tonnes carbon emission reduction by 2030. India has laid out its roadmap; this is more than OECD and certainly what China has done. India enhanced NDC (Nationally Determined Contribution) is a challenge to the world to step up," she said in a tweet. Along with this ready roadmap, India has taken several other quick measures to prevent air pollution, including the replacement of solid fuels with gas for cooking. It has also ramped up its solar and wind power capacity and, backed by Modi, tightened the vehicle-emissions rules. With a goal to cut pollution in 122 cities by up to 30% in the next five years, the central government in 2019 also launched a National Clean Air Programme.