Bhuvan Bhaskar
India has made 5 commitments amidst a gathering of heads of 120 countries at the COP-26 summit for environmental protection in Glasgow, Scotland. The most important of these is to bring down carbon emissions to zero by 2070. If seen, this announcement of India was the most important announcement of the entire summit, which few people expected.
His announcement and the warmth of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bilateral meetings with other heads of state projected India as the most important country in the entire summit and a leader in environmental protection.
The US and Europe have already committed to reducing carbon emissions to zero by 2050, and China has promised to achieve this level by 2060. So now all eyes were on India.
Even in this summit, Joe Biden could not present any new thing or proposal to the world due to his domestic political compulsions, while Chinese President Xi Jinping was not present in the same summit. Overall, the ground was empty in front of Narendra Modi and he hit sixes and fours fiercely in every corner.
While on one hand Modi expressed India’s commitment towards environmental protection and told the world that India is the only country to fulfill the promises made under the Paris Agreement in letter and spirit, while on the other hand it is necessary to fulfill Mission-2070. A concrete plan for 2030 was also laid in front of everyone. Modi announced to increase the target of 450 GW to generate electricity from clean fuel, especially solar energy, to 500 GW by 2030.
Modi, after taking the role of a leader on the global stage of COP-26, also made it clear to the developed countries that just having net-zero carbon emissions is not enough for them.
Modi not only appealed to them to immediately prepare a fund of $ 1 trillion, but also said that the countries which have not fulfilled their commitments towards environmental protection, should fulfill their obligation by collecting such amount in the environment fund. needed. This amount is 10 times more than the money promised by rich countries to the environment fund.
Narendra Modi had actually taken center stage in the world negotiations for environmental protection since the time of the Paris Agreement in 2015. Narendra Modi’s personal activism and role in the unanimous passing of the historic Paris Agreement has been publicly acknowledged by many world leaders.
Under the Paris Agreement, 200 countries signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015 to bring down global warming to 2 degrees below pre-industrial levels.
However, none of the developed countries of the world, including China, faithfully implemented these promises, as a result of which in July this year, about 15,000 leading scientists of the world had to issue an environmental emergency warning, in which they said that The world community has only 12 years left to stop climate devastation, when the rise in temperature can be stopped to a maximum of 1.5 degrees.
Underlining this situation, Modi also warned the whole world and also told that only India has fully fulfilled the promises of Paris Agreement.
In 2009, wealthy countries pledged $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries combat climate change. But after that it was not implemented.
The world needs to cut carbon emissions by 7% every year by 2030, but even last year, when the world economy almost came to a standstill, emissions were cut by only 6%. The United States has committed to halve its emissions levels by 2030 and to zero by 2050.
The study of the Global Carbon Project has done a lot of work to understand the role of countries of the world in climate change. In the study, the share of all countries in the total carbon emissions in the earth’s environment from 1750 to 2018.
According to this, while America has dissolved a total of 397 billion metric tons of carbon in the atmosphere, China has contributed 214, Russia 180, Germany 90, Britain 77 and Japan 58 billion metric tons. India is at number 7 in this list with a contribution of 51 billion metric tonnes.
In such a situation, it is natural that Narendra Modi reminded the rich countries of their responsibility. If they create a $1 trillion fund, it will not be their favor to the world, but the value of their own actions. That too when other developing countries are abandoning their development to pay for their greed and development.
Developed countries are now suffering the consequences of the destruction they have done to the environment, and every year millions of hectares of land are being wasted and thousands of people are dying due to forest fires, droughts and floods.
In such a scenario the developing and underdeveloped part of the world can never accept the leadership of America, Europe or China to save the world from the destruction of the environment.
Narendra Modi, first in Paris and then in Glasgow, has proved that India is all set to lead the world on this front – not just with speeches, but also with its philanthropic efforts. And that is why while the world may doubt the net-zero carbon emission targets of the US, Europe and China, no one is doubting India’s goal.
(The author is an expert in agriculture and economic matters)
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