Kicking climate can down the road amid fears of another weak summit

The UN climate summit ended without a fossil fuel phase-out plan or clear climate finance roadmap, with India's delayed climate pledge adding to the challenges

The raison d’etre for the global climate summit that has been held every year for the past three decades — to stop the planet from warming further — has just been pushed down the road over 10,000 km away to Antalya in Türkiye.  

This was after nearly two weeks of frenzied deliberations in November failed to yield a consensus among 194 countries on emission reduction and climate finance targets.

 

Türkiye will host the 31st edition of the UN Conference of the Parties (COP31) but Australia will oversee the negotiations in an unprecedented arrangement of copresidency birthed out of a political compromise. Australia will mould the agenda for the November 2026 summit in coordination with Pacific nations. 

“In this case, we can expect both 1.5 degrees (Celsius) and mitigation, as well as loss and damage and adaptation, to come to the fore (at COP31),’’ said Ümit Şahin, head of the climate change programme at the Istanbul Policy Centre, Sabancı University, Türkiye, in a commentary on Backchannel.

 

His reference was to attempts at limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels, and the financing needed for meeting expected loss, damage and adaptation costs arising from climate change. 

But Sahin also raised concerns on whether Türkiye and Australia can work harmoniously after bitterly fighting to host COP31.  “If they disagree, will the requirement to consult until consensus push the already chronically delayed COPs even further past their deadlines?” 

“The global ambition to raise (to cap emissions) and the pathway to 1.5 (degree centigrade) being achieved, the text (of the adopted agenda) does not lay down a clear road map. So, it is weak in that sense,’’ said R R Rashmi, India’s climate negotiator at previous COPs and distinguished fellow at thinktank TERI. 

The weakness was exacerbated by the US decision to exit the Paris climate agreement and loosen emission regulations for coal-fired generators. Meanwhile, Canada relaxed rules in order to boost drilling in Alberta province for the world’s dirtiest oil, while planning a new heavy oil pipeline.

 

India’s work 

COP30 went down as a summit of lost opportunities and hopes for India after the global North refused to pay up for the clean-up of the planet. India’s status as the world’s fifth biggest economy and youngest demographic while being the third largest polluter after China and the US, proved inadequate to convince the rich nations led by the European Union to increase climate funding. 

Two key proposals never made it to the final draft of COP30 and will now need to be tackled in Turkey next year. The first involved the phaseout of fossil fuels, an absolute necessity to curb global warming. 

The second involved a detailed plan to offer and access climate finance, which has three components: For mitigation or reducing emissions by increasing renewables; for adaptation or building resilience and infrastructure to face up to extreme weather events; and for compensating for loss and damage from weather events. 

Another matter that didn’t make it to the final agenda in a decisive manner was trade measures by developed nations, like the European Union’s proposed carbon tax on select imports, which India calls a non-tariff barrier.  

Developing countries need $310-365 billion annually by 2035 for adaptation alone —12 times current flows, said Sumant Sinha, CEO, ReNew. India itself requires $50 billion yearly for clean energy, far above today’s $8-10 billion. 

Missing at COP30 

More critical is the government’s commitment to improve India’s air quality, failing which it ends up violating Articles 14 & 21 of the Constitution to ensure citizens fundamental rights to health and a clean environment, something obvious in Delhi this winter.

But that commitment was diluted at COP 30 in the absence of India’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). Informally called climate pledges, these documents list targets and plans to achieve emission cuts over a five-year period, the latest containing details until 2035.  

Over 120 countries have submitted their new climate pledges, leaving India as the only major polluter yet to submit one.  

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said at Belem that countries must be more ambitious with their new pledges and that those which haven’t submitted one should turn them in soon. India is also yet to submit its first national adaptation plan and its first biennial transparency report, key documents that enable nations to access more climate finance. 

Senior analysts remarked that India has overachieved a portion of its 2030 NDC pledge in 2025 — but the Climate Action Tracker, a leading global climate data provider, ranked the country’s climate efforts as “highly insufficient.” 

However, India is not alone. Guterres termed the new NDC pledges, including those of the EU and China, as falling short on ambition, and more in line with a 2.5-degree- Celsius average temperature rise, rather than 1.5.  

Indian officials said that ambitious climate targets must be tempered by the growing need for affordable development in the absence of adequate finance.

 

Weak funding 

“The spirit of investments in clean energy has slackened because of the US withdrawal (from Paris Agreement),” Rashmi said. The EU’s lead climate negotiator Jacob Werksman said that the EU — which claimed to be the biggest donor of climate finance last year at over $30 billion or a quarter of the total climate finance flows from public finance — cannot replace US contributions. 

COP30’s final declaration omits any mention of a roadmap for developing countries to access $300 billion, nor for rich nations to mobilise the amount from public finances. There is also no mention of how countries will raise $1.3 trillion a year by 2035 from public and private finance. 

“India’s ability to meet its NDC commitment of reducing emissions intensity of GDP by 45 per cent by 2030 will depend not just on adding new clean energy, but on the choices we make to reduce demand in the first place,’’ said Pramod Kumar Singh, senior director, Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy (AEEE).  

In 2022-23 alone, efficiency measures ensured the world consumed 307 billion kilowatt hours less of electricity, according to the Bureau of Energy Efficiency. That’s equivalent to an annual output of around 200 Gw of solar capacity, according to AEEE data. Building 200 Gw of solar would cost around ~7 trillion and take over 6 years, according to calculations based on Indian industry data. 

“The goal of tripling adaptation finance remains vague with no specific accountability of contributors,” said Avantika Goswami, programme manager, climate change, Centre for Science and Environment, a Delhi-based think tank.  

“Beyond talk shops, this COP has delivered little else,” she said — an outcome that the next summit must avoid if it is serious about tackling this existential crisis.