As major economies miss the UN climate targets deadline, India’s delay in updating its own climate commitments raises questions about its climate strategy
Several of the world’s largest economies missed a UN deadline, to submit their national climate targets outlining how they plan to cut emissions by 2035, by February 10, except for a handful of countries including the UK and Brazil, which presented strategies for the next decade in alignment with the Paris Agreement. According to World Economic Forum, only 11 of the 195 parties signed up to the Paris Agreement submitted their NDCs before the deadline.
At COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 12, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that the country’s 2035 NDC would reduce all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 81% on 1990 levels, aligned with 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Presently, it is expected that dozens more nations will submit updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) within the nine months before commencement of UN’s annual climate summit, COP30, begins in Brazil.
According to a Bloomberg report, India might not raise its climate targets for tackling carbon emissions. The report further states that the Indian government doesn’t intend to submit an updated version of its NDCs for several months as the document is still in progress. This follows after India expressed its disappointment with developed nations’ failure to meet its demands for more financial aid at last year’s COP29 climate summit.
At the COP29 summit in Baku, developed nations agreed to triple the amount of funding available for developing nations to transition to green energy and adapt to a warmer planet to $300 billion a year through 2035. Indian negotiator Chandni Raina’s outrage at the sum, which she called “paltry” and “not something that will enable conducive climate action,” went viral for capturing the disappointment that many poor, climate-vulnerable nations had with the meeting’s outcome.
India aims to achieve a Net-Zero emission target by 2070. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced at the COP26 climate crisis summit in Glasgow in 2021 that achieving the goal was subject to availability of climate finance from developed countries – the historic emitters.
A Standard Chartered report published in April 2022 stated that India will need investments worth $12.4 trillion, almost half of US GDP, from developed nations and investors to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2060.