Climate financing and aid takes centre stage at high-level UN meeting

At a high-level meeting on climate change hosted by the UN secretary general with select world leaders, climate financing and aid, especially to developing economies, emerged as the key negotiation point. India, which was part of the discussion, emphasised on the need for the developed world to fund the climate actions of developing economies.

The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres waved a warning signal and said the upcoming COP26 faces a high risk of failure unless world leaders take stronger measures to stem greenhouse-gas emissions.

"This (meeting) is a wake-up call to instill a sense of urgency on the dire state of the climate process," said Guterres.

Bhupendra Yadav, union minister for environment forest and climate change (MoEFCC), who represented India in this closed-door discussion, called upon developed countries to fulfil their promise of the $100 billion per year goal made in 2009.

"The developed countries have collectively emitted more than their estimated emission allowances in 2008-2020 period, they should take greater action on mitigation and provide financial support to developing countries," Yadav said.

He also said there needs to be a discussion on whether the scale of resources is commensurate with the scale of the needs of developing countries.

"COP26 should focus on climate finance in scope, scale and speed and transfer of green technologies at low cost," Yadav said.

The meeting included the COP host, United Kingdom, US, China, India, EU nations and several other developing nations.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said post the meeting that too many major economies - are lagging too far behind.

"I’ll stress that again - for this (climate negotiations) to be a success we need developed countries to find that $100 billion. The United States can deliver on a promise to step up its share of money toward the $100 billion annual goal but we've been here before and we're not counting our chickens," Johnson said after the meeting.

COP26 will be held in November this year at Glasgow, UK. The last COP was held in Paris in 2015 when the US pulled out from the negotiations under Donald Trump. Under the new President Joe Biden, US will rejoin the negotiations. US special climate envoy John Kerry was reported saying ahead of the UN meeting, that the US would deliver more climate aid ahead of the COP conference.

The UN also emphasised that countries need to have more ambitious targets for cutting down carbon emissions.

The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released recently, says that in 20 years, global average air temperature may rise by more than 1.5 degree Celsius, a dangerous threshold. Carbon emissions are the main driver of climate change, besides other greenhouse gases and air pollutants, it said.