Backsliding on climate action

• Countries in Europe are cranking up coal plants again.
• Fossil fuels are coming back and countries are rejecting EU’s plan to reduce natural gas consumption by 15%.

Downgrading Commitments

• Developed world will abandon their 2030 Paris Agreement commitments.
• Developing countries must do everything to hold developed countries to their commitments.
• Western nations have started reinterpreting the Paris Agreement and look to downgrade their commitments.

The concept of Net zero

• Article 4 of Paris Agreement defines ‘Global Peaking’:
• To achieve long-term temperature goal set out in Article 2, Parties aim to reach global peaking of GHGs as soon as possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country Parties.
• Developed countries will have to peak first.
• When developing country parties peak later than developed countries, they will also achieve net zero later than developed countries.
• when we consider net zero, we should only consider ‘global net zero’ and not ‘individual net zero’ for 2050.
• It calls on developed countries to “do a net negative” on mitigation by 2050 rather than just “net zero”.

Holding their feet to the fire

• The “global stocktake” of Paris Agreement will be done in 2023 to assess world’s collective progress towards achieving the long-term goals.
• In the current scenario, it may provide developed countries the right forum to shift the burden of their mitigation commitments on developing countries, knowing well that they will not be able to meet theirs by 2030.