From India's largest newsroom, I'm Arun George and this is the
Times of India podcast. The United Nations Climate
Change Conference of COP 28 in Dubai ended with delegates
applauding the deal that they had achieved after days of
uncertainty. Nations participating at the
event agreed that global greenhouse gas emissions need to
be cut 43% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels, and admitted that
nations were off track from earlier promises that had been
made. As per the agreement, nations
will take actions towards a tripling of renewable energy
capacity and a doubling of energy efficiency improvements
by 2030. Nations will also increase
efforts to phase down the use of coal power.
Nation said they will try phasing out inefficient fossil
fuel subsidies and other measures to move away from using
fossil fuels. That bit about fossil fuels was
at the center of controversy even before the start of COP 28.
A BBC report had said Abu Dhabi was working to sign oil deals
with nations while they attended COP 28 in Dubai.
A leaked letter showed that a group of oil producing nations
were urged to vote against moving away from the use of
fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.
Before the applause at the end of the summit, a negotiator for
Samoa, one of the worst hit nations in the world, pointed
out that not enough progress had been made in Dubai.
We have come to the conclusion that the cost correction that is
needed has not been secured. We have made an incremental
advancement over business as usual when what we really needed
is an exponential step change in our actions and support.
In today's episode, we look at what has been achieved in Dubai
and whether it's enough given the very real threat of climate
change in our lifetimes. Our guest is Aditya Bahadur,
who's been on the show before. Aditya is chair of the Research
and strategy team and principal researcher at the International
Institute for Environment and Development, or IIED.
We started by asking him how he viewed the summer and delegate
statement that not enough had been achieved.
Aditya, who's seen plenty of cop meetings, says despite all the
cynicism, there is some reason for cheer.
People like me who've been at it for a long time feel like
there's some reason to be cheerful.
Of course we haven't gone the entire distance in terms of
putting science front and center, but we've travelled
quite a lot to get here. And I say that for a couple of
reasons. One is the emphasis on the
transitioning out of fossil fuels.
I think acknowledged that there's a science base for what
we're trying to do. So I we can't say that science
was being ignored entirely. However, what one needs to
recognize is that a cop process is a political process, not a
scientific process. So there's always give and take
and there's always room to do more.
So I think science was acknowledged.
Maybe not to the optimal degree, but there's reason to be
careful. But Aditya Bahadur also admits
that there was a massive shortcoming in the final
agreement. Where I feel very disappointed,
where I feel like scientific insights are being ignored, is
on adaptation, which is the field of work to help the
vulnerable people deal with the impacts of climate change that
we are facing here and now. And overall, there is consensus
amongst all of us who work on climate adaptation.
But not enough was done to recognize the immense amount of
damage that people are suffering at the moment.
And not enough money and political will was mobilized to
help people adapt to climate change.
One thing that a lot was made of with COP 28, and it's it came
before COP 28 began. It was happening during COP 28.
COP 28 was being in a held in a state where the chief revenue
source is fossil fuels. That's the case with COP 29 as
well, where people are pointing out that Azerbaijan is not
exactly going to support tuning our fossil fuels.
So how do you view then this final declaration on fossil
fuels? I think it's a very substantial
game and I feel like we need to acknowledge that.
And the transitioning away is a very positive development.
Ideally it should have been phasing out, there's no doubt
about that. But this is a messy political
process that's give and take, and the fact that we've settled
on transitioning away I think is great.
The thing with fossil fuels is, especially in the West, you are
now seeing more and more intense protests even in during Corp,
that you need to end the use of fossil fuel.
Why is it so difficult for us to accept that we need to phase out
fossil fuels? Is there no way it can be
accepted quickly enough? Foundation of the modern global
economy is fossil fuel. Even I sometimes when I think
about fossil fuel, I think about fuel that we put in our cars.
But it's so much more than that. It's the plastic that we
consume. You know, there's every part of
our own system is linked very closely to fossil fuels.
Our modern way of life is closely in blind with
prostitute. All our infrastructure is built
around the use of fossil fuels. So it is about recalibrating the
very fiber of how we live our daily life moment to moment.
And I think that kind of a shift takes time and takes a lot of
political wins. The other dimension of it is
lots of very strong economic interests linked to the use of
fossil fuels and linked to those economic interests of political
interests. And unless we can figure out how
to change incentives, we're never going to make the progress
that, you know, this is what makes it too hard.
And while scientific clarity on the fact that we are all driving
towards literally driving towards a Cliff edge where we're
going to reach environmental tipping points is 1 very strong
incentive to move away from it. I think we need to develop
alternative approaches to supporting the modern economic
way of life that is happening slowly and until that gathers
momentum, I think this is going to continue being a problem so.
Why is a consensus on? What seems?
To be a problem that's here and now, so difficult to achieve,
there seems to be a huge problem.
Like, it's almost like the pandemic that you sort of hit
emergency stations. And yet over here we seem to
move at a sort of glacial pace. Is this how we've always been?
And this is perhaps how we'll see it go even in the future.
Yeah, I wish I had a satisfactory answer to that
question. The only thing that I can say
one is that I really think progress has been made.
If one looks at, you know, where we are on some of these very
critical agendas and basically acknowledging that we have to
transition away from fossil fuels permanently, that was
unthinkable earlier. The second thing that I can only
think about is why it's so difficult is because there's so
many political and economic complexities that are tied into
what we need to do to deal with the impacts of climate change.
You know, changing the modern way of life that is
intrinsically bound to the use of fossil fuels includes ships
on so many fronts simultaneously.
That just cannot happen as fast as we need it to happen.
So I think frustration is justified because we have a
limited time and a limited carbon budget that we are
blowing with alacrity at the moment.
And I certainly don't agree that we don't have any examples of
progress being made on other similar fronts with the scale
and urgency needed. Beginning with the ozone crisis
is a positive case study that we need to learn that was dealt
with and has largely been solved.
And it was, well, nothing is as complex as dealing with climate
change on a global scale, but it was comparable in terms of the
cooperation needed by the kind of economic and political
interests that needed to align to agree on the monetary
protocol that has played a massive role in plugging the
ozone hole over the last few decades.
So yeah, I mean, sorry for that wishy washy answer, but that's
the best that I can give you. Another major part of the COP 28
agreement is the mention of energy transition away from
coal, as well as introducing greater energy efficiency.
While there have been criticisms of these provisions as being too
vague, we asked Aditya Badur what he thought of this part of
the agreement. I think that clear
acknowledgement that we need to triple renewable energy capacity
and double energy efficiency improvements over the next seven
years, I think it's a pretty categorical and a pretty
important step forward. I'm sure others in an ideal
world would like much more, but we have to acknowledge where we
are and where they're going to. So I would not concede that it's
been big in terms of renewable energy.
Yes, it's an expansion of the use of solar, wind, certain
kinds of hydroelectric power as well.
And in terms of energy efficiency, it's about
increasing it from 2% to 4% annually by 20-30 energy
efficiency simply, I'm sure there's a technical definition
out there, but it's simply about trying to do the same thing by
using less energy. So light up a room to the tune
of 100 Watt bulb and in canvassing bulb but do it with
whatever 8 watts or something that an LED bulb does.
The one part of the final agreement that Aditya Bhadur is
critical about is the funding to adapt to climate change and to
deal with its effects. India, like many other nations,
is estimated to be losing lives and economic growth due to
climate linked events like heat waves, droughts, floods and
cyclones. We asked Aditya Bhadur about his
views on climate change linked finance, given that a fund for
loss and damage due to climate change has been created at COP
28. So where my it's optimism falls
away in on the climate finance story where I think the COP has
given me no reason to see the glass as half full or very
little reason, at least less than the other things.
With all agreed that rich countries need to provide $100
billion a year, when nowhere near that.
An extremely dodgy, highly spurious calculation puts the
2021 figure at 89 billion, but which has been by and large
criticized by all serious players.
A more accurate figure I think is around the 25 billion mark
which is 1/4 or what has been agreed.
Now, The funny thing is that even as this promise has not
been met, what we need to deal with the kind of climate change
that we're facing has massively increased.
And by some estimates, it stands with something like $800 billion
a year. And this is for reducing
greenhouse gases and helping people adapt.
For adaptation alone, the figure is something within the range of
200 to $400 billion a year. And just to put that in
perspective, only 200 million also have been pledged to the
adaptation fund, which is one of a one very important fund.
So we are kind of nowhere near the kind of money that's needed.
And even if you include the $700 million that has been notionally
pledged for the loss and damage fund, that's nowhere near what
we need. And one must remember that the
$700 million isn't fresh and additional money.
It is redistributed largely from within the same envelope of
money that countries were making available to deal with climate
change. Despite science indicating that
human activity is contributing to global weather changes,
there's still no shortage of scepticism given the changes
needed in our lifestyles to deal with climate change.
Aditya Bhador admits that he's encountered the skepticism
himself, but says there's now no escaping the potential impacts
of climate change. You know, oftentimes people come
up to me and say the world has existed for billions of years
when there was much more carbon. It'll exist, I said.
Yes, of course the world will continue to exist, but it just
won't have human beings in it. So what will Aditya Bhadur be
watching for in COP 29, which will be held in Azerbaijan next
year? Unsatisfactory progress was made
on agreeing on a global goal for climate adaptation, Just as we
have the critical thresholds of two degree rise and 1.5° rise.
On the mitigation part, we don't really have any comparable
target that the global community is working towards an
adaptation. Not much progress on this was
made at this call, so we'd like to see some kind of a
substantial agreement happening around that.
The second thing is we would like to see more detail on how
this loss and damage fund the $700 million that can agree how
that's going to operate when money is going to be
distributed, who is going to be eligible for it.
I'd like to see that number go up overall in the next cup.
I think climate finance needs to be front and center and this not
only includes enhancing the quantity of climate finance,
which is ruefully inadequate at the moment, but also much more
agreement and progress on the quality and nature of this
finance. For instance, at the moment it's
widely acknowledged that a lot of the finance goes to national
level, actors, institutions, ministries, etcetera, whereas
the people who are suffering most from climate change are at
the local level, at the village level for instance.
And money really doesn't reach these people.
So we would like to see progress on new mechanisms through which
local actors and institutions can receive the financing and
the decision making ability to withstand climate change.
Like you said, you've seen it over 2 decades.
How is it to be looking at the science of it and be looking at
the political progress of it when you know it is proceeding
this incrementally? Given you look at things as 1/2
glass full, when you view 20 years of it, do you still view
it as half glass full? I still do, of course.
I'm not trying to paper over the fact that we're not taking
action as urgently as we need to, but it was inconceivable
even a few years ago that the countries of the world would
come together to jointly agree on transitioning away from
fossil fuels, the kind of entrenched positions that
existed in these deliberations. Only a few years ago, it was
inconceivable. In this COP we have seen a clear
commitment to transition away from the use of fossil fuels
over the next few decades, which I think is a massive achievement
anywhere you look at it. Of course we can acknowledge
that the language around transitioning away isn't as hard
or as scientific as we would like, but it is a massive step
change. So I still maintain my position
as a glass half full person and want to reinstate my faith in
the very complex multilateral process and this form of messy
cooperation that's needed between nations to arrive at the
path forward. Today's episode was produced by
Jayaraj Singh and Sahil Gupta. For a daily spotlight on people,
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