An analysis by Carbon Brief shows that the US has released more than 509 Gt CO2 since 1850 and accounts for the largest share of historical emissions, with some 20% of global emissions. , Photo Credit: AP
Backed by other developing countries, India blocked the effort of rich countries to focus on all top 20 emitters of carbon dioxide during discussions on a ‘mitigation action programme’. UN climate summit underway in Egypt, sources said on Monday.
He said that during the first week of climate talks, developed countries wanted all top 20 emitters, including India and China, to discuss rapid emissions cuts, not just rich countries that have been historically responsible for climate change.
The top 20 emitters, including India, are developing countries that do not account for much of the warming that has already happened.
According to sources, India pushed back the effort with the support of like-minded developing countries including China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
“The MWP should not lead to the reopening of the Paris Agreement” which explicitly mentions that countries’ climate commitments should be determined at the national level based on circumstances, India and other developing countries reportedly said .
At COP26 in Glasgow last year, the parties acknowledged that a 45% reduction in global CO2 emissions by 2030 (compared to 2010 levels) is needed to limit the average global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.
Accordingly, they agreed to develop a Mitigation Work Program (MWP) to “urgently scale up mitigation ambition and implementation”. Mitigation means reducing emissions, ambition means setting strong targets and implementation means meeting new and existing targets.
Coming into COP27, developing countries had expressed concerns that rich nations through the MWP would push them to revise their climate targets without increasing the supply of technology and finance.
In the run-up to COP27, India had said that the MWP cannot be allowed to “change the target positions” set by the Paris Agreement.
The Union Environment Ministry had said, “In the mitigation action programme, the best practices for technology transfer and capacity building, new technologies and new ways of collaboration may be discussed meaningfully.”
An analysis by Carbon Brief shows that the US has released more than 509 Gt of CO2 since 1850 and accounted for the largest share of historical emissions, with some 20% of global emissions. China is a relatively distant second with 11%, followed by Russia (7%). India is ranked seventh with 3.4% of the cumulative total.
Earth’s global surface temperature has increased by about 1.15 °C compared to the pre-industrial (1850–1900) average and CO2 has been diffused into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Major damage was already done before 1990 when economies like India started to develop.
According to the “Global Carbon Budget Report 2022”, more than half of the world’s CO2 emissions in 2021 came from three locations – China (31%), the US (14%), and the European Union (8%). In fourth place, India accounts for 7% of global CO2 emissions.
However, at 2.4 tCO2e (tonne carbon dioxide equivalent), India’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions are much lower than the world average of 6.3 tCO2e, according to a report released by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) last month.
Per capita emissions (14 tCO2e) in the US are well above the global average, followed by Russia (13 tCO2e), China (9.7 tCO2e), Brazil and Indonesia (about 7.5 tCO2e each), and the European Union (7.2 tCO2e).