- Prelims: Current events of national importance, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Nipah virus, The Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) etc
- Mains GS Paper I & II: Development and management of social sectors/services related to Health and education etc
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
- The 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) took place in Dubai
- It was notable in terms of stopping the lackadaisical approach of the international community to the adaptation concern
INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE
Context
Relevance of COP:
- The COP remains the central place where the machinery of global climate governance gets built.
- All countries have a voice at COPs, questions of equity and vulnerability are more likely to be placed on the table.
Devastating weather events of 2023:
- Extreme heat in North Africa and Europe
- Wildfires in Canada and Hawaii
- Floods in India and Libya
- Drought in the Horn of Africa.
- Land and ocean temperatures increases
- Antarctic sea ice decreased
Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA):
● It was established under the Paris Agreement to enhance climate change adaptation by increasing awareness of and funding towards countries’ adaptation needs in the context of the 1.5/2°C goal of the Paris Agreement.
● The draft text addresses critical issues:
○ Climate-Induced Water Scarcity Reduction.
○ Climate-resilient food and Agriculture Production.
○ Strengthening Resilience Against Climate-Related Health Impacts.
Main target in the GGA:
● Parties to the Paris Agreement having “conducted up-to-date assessments of climate hazards
● Climate change impacts and exposure to risks
● Vulnerabilities and have[ing] used the outcomes of these assessments to inform their formulation of national adaptation plans
● Policy instruments, and planning processes and/or strategies”, by 2030.
Challenges in the implementation of GGA:
● By 2027, all the Parties have to establish multi-hazard early warning systems, climate information services for risk reduction and systematic observation
○ To support improved climate-related data, information and services.
○ A significant point is whether it will advance adaptation.
● A comprehensive review of experiences from the Millennium Development Goals found that globally agreed goals do not trickle down easily from the global to the national level.
○ National conditions, including administrative capacity and economic development, were identified alongside adequate support as key influencing factors for the implementation of a global goal.
Measuring GGA:
● Its ambition or implementation level cannot be simply aggregated based on countries’ national pledges.
● The GGA framework has launched a two-year work programme on indicators for measuring progress achieved towards the targets mentioned in GGA draft decisions.
○ But it does not currently mention who will develop them, or how.
Potential role of universal indicators:
- In a global context of scarce public funds and competing priorities, the idea of spending in those adaptation activities would not pose much difficulty if their results can be fairly measured and compared.
- The idea of developing a standardized metric is being supported by international donors and the national budget managers
- It would help them in applying this to all sorts of adaptation projects.
- After dimension of climate change problem mitigation is working with one relatively simple and universal metric of CO2 equivalents
- It can be applied across specific contexts to measure impacts in an easily comparable format.
COP Financing:
- The COP28 Draft Decision:
- The adaptation finance gap is widening: It amounts to highlighting the widening gap between the estimated costs of meeting a given adaptation target and the amount of finance available.
- The COP26’s urge to developed countries to double overall adaptation finance from 2019 levels by 2025 was repeated in the Draft Decision.
- Estimates made on the basis of updated NDCs or national adaptation plans indicate a figure of $71 billion per year from now to 2030.
- The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries have admitted that their combined mitigation and adaptation finance flows fell short of the annual $100 billion to $83.3 billion in 2020.
Way Forward
- The climate change regime has been largely mitigation centric; rich countries do not gain much as the benefits of adaptation are local
- mitigation projects generate benefits globally and the availability of low-cost mitigation options in developing countries.
- Buchner(Climate Policy Initiative, Venice, 2011). : A split between mitigation and adaptation finance is 95:5.
- Self-reporting made by finance providers indicates: There has been a trend of increasing international adaptation finance to developing countries in recent years, reaching $6 billion in 2020
- The share of adaptation in total climate finance to developing countries was 34% in 2020, still far behind mitigation finance (Adaptation Gap Report, 2022).
- The GGA is an encouraging development as it contains a number of developments that are very useful for the cause of adaptation.
- It falls woefully short in terms of treating adaptation on a par with mitigation
- It lays stress on holding the increase in the global average temperature well below 2° C and 1.5° C essential for ensuring the continued availability of the largest number of adaptation options
- GGA adds greater levels of mitigation that will reduce the need for additional adaptation efforts.
QUESTION FOR PRACTICE
Describe the major outcomes of the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). What are the commitments made by the India conference? (UPSC 2021) I (200 WORDS, 10 MARKS)
