Climate Finance Developed nations’ neglect
India expresses dissatisfaction with developed countries’ unwillingness to
engage in the Climate Finance and Mitigation Work Programme at COP29 in
Baku.
India expressed dissatisfaction over the insistence of developed countries to
expand the scope of MWP from what was agreed in the past. India aligned its
stance with the views expressed by the Like-Minded Developing Countries
(LMDCs), the Arab Group and the African Group of Negotiators (AGN).
India stated: “We have seen no progress in matters that are critical 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 to adapt to the
changes to the climatic system for which we are not responsible.”
The MWP was established with a specific mandate that it shall be operationalised
through focused exchanges of views, information and ideas, noting that the
outcomes of the work programme 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 goal. India pointed out: “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?”
Those with the highest capacity to take climate action have continuously shifted
goalposts, delayed climate action, and consumed a highly 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 own
mitigation ambition and implementation, nor in providing the means of
implementation.”
