On 16.11.2024, India delivered a statement in the closing plenary of the Subsidiary Bodies on the ‘Agenda on Sharm el-Sheikh Mitigation Ambition and Implementation Work Programme (MWP)’ at the CoP29, which was held in Baku, Azerbaijan.
India, in alignment with the views of the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs), the Arab Group, and the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), expressed dissatisfaction with the insistence of developed countries to expand the scope of MWP from what was agreed upon in the past, thus inhibiting progress on the agenda item.
India expressed severe concern about the lack of progress at CoP29. The statement mentioned, “We have seen no progress in critical matters for developing countries. Our part of the world is facing some of the worst impacts of climate change, with far lower capacity to recover from those impacts or adapt to the climatic system changes for which we are not responsible.”
The statement further read, “We notice a tendency to ignore the decisions taken in the past – related to the Sharm el-Sheikh mitigation ambition and implementation work program at CoP27 and the context of the Global Stocktake in the Paris Agreement, where it informs the parties for undertaking climate actions.”
India stressed that the MWP was established with a specific mandate that it shall be operationalized through focused exchanges of views, information, and ideas, noting that the outcomes of the work program will be non-prescriptive, non-punitive, facilitative, respectful of national sovereignty and national circumstances, while taking into account the nationally determined nature of nationally determined contributions and will not impose new targets or goals.
India, expressing frustration at the developed countries’ unwillingness to engage on this issue during the past week in this Finance CoP, the statement read, “If there are no means of implementation, there can be no climate action. How can we discuss climate action when it is being made impossible for us to act, even as our challenges in dealing with the impacts of climate change are increasing?”
India asserted that those with the highest capacity to take climate action have continuously shifted goalposts, delayed climate action, and consumed a disproportionate share of the global carbon budget. The lead negotiator stated, “We now have to meet our developmental needs in a situation of increasingly depleting carbon budget and increasing impacts of climate change. We are being asked to increase mitigation ambition by those who have shown no such ambition, either in their mitigation ambition and implementation or in providing the means of implementation.”
The statement added that this bottom-up approach is being attempted to be made into a top-down approach, which would, in turn, attempt to turn the whole mandate of the MWP and the principles of the Paris Agreement upside down.
Reference: PIB
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