NEW DELHI: India expects a clear roadmap on climate financing during the COP28 starting today, where world leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will converge to chalk out strategies for climate mitigation.
"Climate finance and climate technology are a very crucial segment of all the global efforts to address this challenge of environmental degradation. We expect a clear roadmap to be agreed upon at COP28 on climate finance, which would be important for delivering on the new, collective, quantified goals," foreign secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra told media persons here in the national capital.
Climate finance typically refers to any financing that seeks to support mitigation and adaptation actions that will address climate change.
Asked what India's stance on the reduction of coal consumption for its energy requirements was, Kwatra said, "Coal is and will remain an important part of India's energy mix; it has always been, as we move forward to meet our developmental priorities in the country."
"We are proactive in taking practical climate action measures and basing them on a firm conceptual understanding and a very firm belief that our development has to be a green development," he said, adding that it would be subject to India's own developmental priorities.
PM Modi committed to an ambitious five-part "Panchamrit" pledge at COP26, held in 2021. They included reaching 500 GW of non-fossil electricity capacity, generating half of all energy requirements from renewables, and reducing emissions by 1 billion metric tonnes by 2030.
India also aims to reduce the emissions intensity of GDP by 45 per cent. Finally, India commits to net-zero emissions by 2070.
The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly referred to as COP28, will be the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will be held from November 30 until December 12, 2023, in Dubai.
The path to net zero by 2050 would require green investments to rise from USD 900 billion in 2020 to USD 5 trillion annually by 2030, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In a recent blog, the IMF's Simon Black, Florence Jaumotte, and Prasad Ananthakrishnan argued that emerging and developing countries (EMDEs) need USD 2 trillion annually, a fivefold increase from 2020.
Recently, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman called for concrete action on climate funding and the transfer of technology at the upcoming global climate summit COP28, where policymakers and governments will converge to chalk out a future strategy for climate mitigation.
"India will certainly be pushing forward to showcase what it has achieved with its own funds. The Paris commitment given by us has been funded by us. We didn't wait for the hundred billion that is never on the table. A lot of talk, but no money coming on the table. No pathways to show how technology is going to be transferred," Nirmala Sitharaman observed.
Demanding action instead of words, the Union Minister said, "Particularly for developing and emerging market economies, funding this is going to be a huge challenge. So, I would think the conversations can happen; a lot of talks can happen, but eventually, COP28 should show the direction, both for the transfer of technology and for the actual funding."