India skips London Climate Meet on technical reasons

New Delhi, July 28

As the environment and climate ministers from over four dozen countries concluded a meeting that took a step closer towards the COP26 on key issues related to actions to be taken to keep the global goal of restricting the temperature to ‘1.5C’, India chose to skip the London Climate Ministerial citing technical reasons for not attending it.

Apart from the ‘1.5C’ goal (know so as the effort of climate negotiations is to restrict the emissions in a manner that the global temperature does not increase more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial levels of the 1880s), the London Climate Ministerial also discussed adaptation finance and concluded the Paris Rulebook.

The Paris Agreement provides the framework for global action to cut down on emissions, but it is the rulebook that will set the Agreement in motion by laying out the tools and processes to enable its full, fair, and effective implementation.

This event in London ahead of the annual November climate change summit (UNFCCC COP) was the first face-to-face ministerial meeting of its kind in more than 18 months.

As announced by the office of Ashok Sharma, the president-designate of the Glasgow COP, said: “With fewer than 100 days to go until the critical UN climate change conference, Sharma is convening the meeting in London to shape the vision of the final outcomes from COP26, and build a ‘unity of purpose to deliver them’.” In all, 51 countries were to attend the event either face to face or virtually and it was only India that did not choose either option.

Queries from IANS to the Ministry of Environment, Science and Climate Change received a standard reply from the Ministry spokesperson.

“India attended the G20 ministerial and made its stand clear. The UK climate ministerial was right after that. It was being held in the middle of the Parliament session so it was decided that this time we cannot be present. On an official level, we wanted to participate virtually but we couldn’t because of various technical issues”, the official spokesperson of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change Gaurav Khare said.

At the G20 Climate Ministerial in Italy, India had participated virtually when it was held over the weekend. India has been asking the rich countries, the developed world to cut down on emissions so that there is scope for the poor countries, the developing world to improve the lives of their people that are most vulnerable to multiple extreme weather events.

Following the meeting, Sharma said in London, “The steps we have taken over the past two days bring us closer to securing an outcome at Glasgow that people and our planet are crying out for. However, faultlines remain on some critical issues, and there is more work to do.” –IANS