India will come to negotiations with a demand that promises to ignite the climate in Dubai: the more advanced economies must do their part by producing negative emissions by 2050, not just by becoming carbon neutral. Thus developing countries would have more time to exploit fossils again
In December, the Cop28 will be held on climate in the United Arab Emirates
(sustainabilityenvironment.com) – The country that at COP26 blocked the agreement on the gradual abandonment of coal – turning it into a milder “reduction” – will use the COP28 on climate to ask the richest countries to become negative carbon instead of carbon neutral. And leave more time for all other states to continue to mine and consume fossil fuels.
This is the position with which India will sit at the negotiating table at the climate summit in December. This was announced by a government official at the Reuters agency. “Rich countries should become net producers of negative emissions before 2050 to enable the world to reach the global zero emissions target by that year while allowing developing countries to use available natural resources for growth,” he said.
What do you mean by carbon negative?
Most countries with more advanced economies have already set a goal of becoming climate-neutral by the middle of the century, namely zero net emissions. To become negative carbon, however, a country’s emission budget must have more greenhouse gases captured than those emitted. A horizon that, to be plausible in 2050, necessarily requires the use of technologies for the direct capture of CO2 from the air. Technologies that are already theoretically available but not yet mature, neither for the costs nor for the efficiency that they can guarantee.
What does India want from COP28 on climate?
If it is also adopted by other developing countries, India’s position is likely to become even more heated by the COP28 on climate negotiations. On the one hand, I am reviving the debate that almost split the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh last year, when discussions on the mechanism for losses and damages brought the issue of the historical responsibility of the richest countries back to the center. The idea is that in order to calculate the “right contribution” to the fight against the climate crisis we must not only look at current emissions but at those accumulated since the beginning of the industrial era. In this way, even a large emitter like India – the 4 largest polluters in the world – is far less responsible for the climate crisis than countries like the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, and even China.
On the other hand, New Delhi’s demand seems to have been built to have extra leverage in negotiations over the fossil phase-out. The gradual abandonment of all fossil fuels – not only coal but also oil and gas – is one of the most controversial dossiers to be discussed at COP28 on climate. And even then the rift separates countries with more advanced economies from developing ones.
