October 30, 2022, Sunday 

12 noon – 1 pm

• Environment has become an issue across the world and everybody living on the earth today is suffering. For e.g., Europe has had a drought because of war, some parts of India are getting excess rains, while some parts are facing a drought. The AQI level in Delhi is around 450 today. Because of the Russia Ukraine war, gas is not available. Now they will go back to coal again because of which there will be more of sulphur, more AQI level of pollution in the air.
• The top 10 most polluted cities in India are not Delhi or any other metropolitan city but they are some of the very smaller towns where air pollution is much high. Water and sound pollution has also to be considered alongside. 
• The UN climate change Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP 27) is being held in Egypt from the 6th to 18th November. 

• The UNFCC came into existence subsequent to the Rio summit in 1992.  UNFCC came into force in 1994. Since then, these meetings are held annually towards the end of the year except for 2020, when it could not happen because of pandemic. 
• The last summit (COP 26) was in Glasgow under the presidency of the UK. This year, the presidency will now be held by Egypt. Presidency does have a role because they set up agenda and assign priority to the subjects to be discussed. 
• COP27 will help build on the outcomes of COP26 to deliver action on issues critical to tackling climate emergency like urgently reducing greenhouse emissions, building resilience, delivering on commitment to financing climate actions in developing countries to face the growing energy crisis, record greenhouse emissions and increasing extreme weather conditions like heat wave, floods, forest fires etc.

• The COP27 seeks renewed solidarity between countries to deliver on the landmark Paris agreement for people and the planet. 
• We must unite to limit the greenhouse warming below 2^o and work hard to meet the 1.5 ^o degree target. This requires bold and immediate actions from all parties particularly those who are in a position to do so and those who can make efforts. Unless developing countries are supported, we cannot achieve the target of 2^o degree or 1.5 ^o because survival is of priority for these countries.
• Such ambitious transformative actions provide a paradigm shift for more sustainable climate resilient, low emission and carbon neutral future based on the science.
• Implementation requires serious input and contribution from all stakeholders, government & non-governmental. 
• There will be different thematic days in the conference including Finance Day, Science Day, Youth & Future Generation Day, Decarbonisation Day, Adaptation & Agriculture Day, Gender Day, Water Day, Africa day, Energy Day, Biodiversity day.
• We need to focus on sustainable features and principles that use of renewable energy particular focus on solar power, energy efficiency issues, e-mobility, sustainable & smart transport system, water use & conservation, adopting proper waste management process like including recyclable and environment-friendly alternatives. 
• The environmental conditions today are not as much the question of performance as of attitude. Stubble burning (parali) is an example of attitude. Clouded minds, vested interests and failure to commit are the problems that COP faces. The Glasgow Pact is very often quite vague and also often not translated into actionable details.
• Monitoring is another area, which is very difficult to manage. Unless monitoring is done of some scale with comparable instruments, monitoring data may be of no or little value. All countries are not well equipped equally. Moreover, there are interest which require the data to be either suppressed or even manipulated. Very often suppression of data is not so much of dishonesty, but conclusions drawn from the remaining data are different from facts. However, a change of heart is difficult to take place. 
• The UNFCC process has been quite disappointing. Lot of action has to happen outside of the UNFCC forum.
• The sentiment is that the developed countries, who are mainly responsible for climate change, have not come up with their commitments. Neither commitments in reducing their own emissions nor giving technology & finance to developing countries.
• We had commitments under the Kyoto protocol but they were not met in the 1st commitment period in 2012 and also in the 2nd commitment period ending in 2020. We had a pre-2020 commitment. 2020 has gone without any commitments being met by the developed countries. Now we have a new agenda that is pre 2030 commitment. 
• The main agenda is that the developing countries have a lot of development deficit. We have 1 billion people who are below poverty line in the world. A quarter of them may be in India. The hunger problem is huge. These vulnerable populations are also vulnerable to climate change.
• Development is the best defence to adaptation. Developing countries cannot be denied their rights to develop. India is home to 17%  global population but our historical Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions have been only 4% (IPCC).
• It has been recognised for the first time that the whole problem is because of global carbon budget. 
• The extreme events which we are witnessing now are a result of 1.1^o degree, which we have reached right now. 1.1 is because of concentration of ≥415 ppm of carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere. This is a global problem. 
• India has done a lot in climate action. We are amongst the fastest growing renewable energy sectors in the world. There is a lot of investment coming in other sectors as well like green hydrogen emission.  We are also doing a lot of research in carbon capture utilisation storage. A lot of transition is happening in the transport sector whether in terms of freight corridors or public transportation & e-vehicles. In developed countries, almost 33% emissions come from transport sector whereas in India it is 9.7% right now.
• The climate change problem is a problem of consumption. Unless people can be convinced to reduce consumption, this problem is not going to be solved. 
• There are many conventional sources of energy, which have long drawn investments. They have to be phased out in a timely manner. 
• The main agenda for COP27 will be loss and damage finance facility. There have been losses because of extreme weather events and there are damages, which are permanent. Loss & damage was also identified in the Paris agreement in paragraph 52 of 1/CP2, according to which there will not be any financial liability or compensation due to loss and damage arising out of climate change. In the last 5-6 years, there is a lot of momentum in creating a loss and damage finance facility.
• Other agenda include global stocktake every 5 years, which was agreed upon in the Paris Agreement.  The next global stocktake is coming up in 2023. This is important in examining the commitments of the developed countries in terms of how much they have reduced their own emissions and given their funds. In 2009, 100 billion dollars would move from developed to developing countries. But this commitment is far from being fulfilled. 
• There is lot of ongoing discussion on the definition of climate finance. Many times funds given for road development, hydroelectric power plants etc. have been dubbed as climate finance. This is a contentious issue.
• The special circumstances of Africa are also going to be on the Agenda. Many African countries want special status given to Africa as this is the most vulnerable and poor part of the world.
• The way forward and the only solution is that India has to invest in research and innovation, develop its own technologies and rapidly invest in frontier technologies which will help in future. The technology developed for climate change has to be freely available or not much of profit. 
• We have to change our lifestyle and see that we don’t profiteer from this disaster, otherwise we will continue to have rising emissions. Right now it stands at 52billion tonnes every year .We need to reduce it to 25-30billion tonnes by 2030 to have any chance of achieving the target of 1.5^o or 2 ^o degrees.
• COP27 will be an agenda for a thorough review of whatever commitments have already been made & implementing whatever had been committed to. Not much headway is expected to be achieved in this also. Earlier we had BRIC countries asking for their share now of African countries & Latin American countries are also asking for their share.
• Lifestyle changes have to be emphasized upon. Last one decade in every COP, Indian govt has been advocating for lifestyle changes . If the west adopts our life style changes, the emission will automatically come down by 40% or so.
• India had said in COP that luxury emissions cannot be and shall not be equated to survival emissions. We have survival emissions, while developed countries are emitting luxury emissions.

• Any change in temperature will affect the livelihood of the human population dependent on the coast especially fishermen. It will also result in salt water intrusion and alteration in major rainfall pattern, which will affect the yield of crops including fisheries.
• We need to identify corporates and ask them to adopt all coastal villages. This can be a simple and workable solution in India because external finances are not going to come because of the pandemic and the war.
• Using cycles for transport will reduce the carbon footprint. The MoE&CC and UNEP had published a book on low carbon lifestyles in 2016, which describes various activities and calculates how much GHG is reduced with each activity. In 2015, the Prime Minister had released a book ‘Parampara’ at COP21 in Paris. The ministry has published a brochure, which describes activities in terms of per capita emissions – such as meat consumption, food wastage. Samanvay, which is a combination of traditional and modern approach to low carbon pathway was also published by the Ministry.

Participants

Dr Anil Kumar

Mr Vivek Kumar

Mr Paritosh Tyagi

Mr Ajay Raghav

Mr Pradeep Khandelwal

Mr Ankit Sethi

Dr Ravindar Kumar

Mr PK Jain

Mr Neeraj Tyagi

Mr Rajeev Sharma

Dr M Dwarakanath