Topic: Climate Change
4) At Katowice, the Paris accord didn’t die—and that, however meagre a success in the larger scheme of things, is significant. Critically analyze. (250 words)
Why this question
The outcome of the recent summit at Katowice has come out with a rulebook for creating a framework for implementing the Paris accord. It is important to analyze how far this rulebook would go in keeping the catastrophic impacts of climate change at bay.
Key demand of the question
The question basically expects us to analyze how far the rulebook coming out of Katowice would be successful in mitigating the impact of climate change. IPCC report has painted a really bleak picture of the future scenario and we need to examine whether the framework agreed at the cop24 summit can be considered as a success or not. We need to provide a fair and balanced conclusion and discuss the way forward.
Directive word
Critically analyze – When asked to analyze, you have to examine methodically the structure or nature of the topic by separating it into component parts and present them as a whole in a summary. When ‘critically’ is suffixed or prefixed to a directive, all you need to do is look at the good and bad of something and give a fair judgement.
Structure of the answer
Introduction – Explain about the Katowice summit and what it intended to achieve.
Body
- Discuss about the major agreements reached upon in the rulebook.
- The rulebook provides what kinds of financial flows — loans, concessions, grants — can be classified as ‘climate finance’, which developed countries are supposed to provide to developing countries to help them deal with climate change. It also specifies how they should be accounted for, and the kind of information about them needed to be submitted.
- details on funding and building capacity have been postponed. References to “equity” in the draft rule book were erased by the U.S. delegation.
- Critically analyze how far the rulebook can be considered a success. Highlight that issues related to equity, loss and damage etc have been put on the backburner, India and many other developing countries rued the fact that the “balance” that they would have liked to see in the agreement was missing etc
- Discuss that it provides a basic framework on which to work upon to highlight the meagre success the agreement provides.
Conclusion – Give a fair and balanced conclusion about how far the process at COP24 has been a success and what more needs to be done.
