Skip to main content

Consider HDI to design global stocktake under Paris Deal: India at Bonn Climate Meet (downtoearth,)

Negotiations started as part of informal consultations on the issue of global stocktake, one of the key elements of the Paris Agreement.

Global Stocktake, mentioned in Article 14 of the Paris climate deal, is meant to assess collective progress of climate actions, including mitigation, adaptation and means of implementation, with a view to enhance the future round of climate action plans or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

With a view to streamline negotiations, co-chairs proposed four bullet points under which discussions could take place. These relate to possible linkages and context, possible outputs, possible elements of modalities and possible elements of sources of inputs. The output of the discussions would be captured in an informal note to be prepared by co-facilitators.

Parties also emphasised on the linkages that Global Stocktake has with regard to different segments of the Paris Agreement, including long-term goals, information on NDCs, technology mechanism, transparency framework and global goal on adaptation.

Among various aspects, Parties also discussed equity as the textual language in the Paris Agreement mandates that Global Stocktake must be conducted taking equity into consideration. The issue did not seem too important for developed countries while developing countries showed keenness to discuss it.

India on stocktaking

India made a strong intervention on Global Stocktake during the informal consultations. It put forth a detailed and elaborate description of how equity can be operationalised in Global Stocktake on the lines of what Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment has been advocating for some time now.

India said that there were different ways to operationalise equity and one approach to frame equity is in the context of the human development index (HDI).

The growth trajectory of countries has always been in relation to carbon space and the future development of countries. In terms of HDI, it will depend on the amount of carbon space. Against this backdrop, equity and Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities would be operationalised. India said that global stocktake was a comprehensive approach and should include an assessment of pre-2020 actions too.

China advocated that equity should be reflected in the synergies of different components of Global Stocktake, including means of implementation, along with mitigation and adaptation. Brazil said Equity in global stocktake should be related to fairness and ambition.

Developed countries, including the European Union, New Zealand, Japan and Canada, focused more on the modalities of global stocktake and how the process of stocktake should enhance ambition of all countries. They also stressed on how to make the process of stocktake manageable. On equity, Canada said that the “mandate is to assess collective progress, and not take stock of the goal of the Paris Agreement in terms of equity.”

Grenada was the only country that pressed for the scope of Global Stocktake to be elaborate and comprehensive to include loss and damage.

There were no concrete outcomes emerging out of discussions on global stocktake and much of the technicalities will need detailed and lengthy discussions.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

SC asks Centre to strike a balance on Rohingya issue (.hindu)

Supreme Court orally indicates that the government should not deport Rohingya “now” as the Centre prevails over it to not record any such views in its formal order, citing “international ramifications”. The Supreme Court on Friday came close to ordering the government not to deport the Rohingya. It finally settled on merely observing that a balance should be struck between humanitarian concern for the community and the country's national security and economic interests. The court was hearing a bunch of petitions, one filed by persons within the Rohingya community, against a proposed move to deport over 40,000 Rohingya refugees. A three-judge Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, began by orally indicating that the government should not deport Rohingya “now”, but the government prevailed on the court to not pass any formal order, citing “international ramifications”. With this, the status quo continues even though the court gave the community liberty to approach i...

High dose of Vitamin C and B3 can kill colon cancer cells: study (downtoearth)

In a first, a team of researchers has found that high doses of Vitamin C and niacin or Vitamin B3 can kill cancer stem cells. A study published in Cell Biology International showed the opposing effects of low and high dose of vitamin C and vitamin B3 on colon cancer stem cells. Led by Bipasha Bose and Sudheer Shenoy, the team found that while low doses (5-25 micromolar) of Vitamin C and B3 proliferate colon cancer stem cells, high doses (100 to 1,000 micromolar) killed cancer stem cells. Such high doses of vitamins can only be achieved through intravenous injections in colon cancer patients. The third leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, colon cancer can be prevented by an intake of dietary fibre and lifestyle changes. While the next step of the researchers is to delineate the mechanisms involved in such opposing effects, they also hope to establish a therapeutic dose of Vitamin C and B3 for colon cancer stem cell therapy. “If the therapeutic dose gets validated under in vivo...

"ISRO has capabilities to build geostationary satellites for air quality monitoring” (downtoearth)

Pawan Gupta's findings on trans-boundary movement of pollution (Punjab to Delhi) from biomass burning in 2015 spurred debates. He participated in discussions with Indian regulators early September at the Better Air Quality Conference in Busan on the advantages of using satellite data for air quality monitoring. He explains to Down to Earth how air quality monitoring is done using satellite data. How is satellite data used to measure air pollution? Satellites that provide information on atmospheric pollutants are normally (not always) in the low earth orbits (400-1000 km above the Earth’s surface). A single satellite can carry one or more remote sensing instruments onboard that look down to earth and obtain information about the object in the field of view of satellite sensor. The Earth receives electromagnetic radiation from the sun, which travels through space and reaches the earth-atmosphere system. The radiation then interacts with the Earth’s atmosphere and the surface...