New Delhi: The rollback of pledges by a major economy can lead to missed global climate mitigation targets, but state- and municipal-level policies can still bear positive impacts, said Jim Skea, chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Skea said that withdrawing from an agreement may not mean the country will stop all climate change mitigation activities.
“If they (countries) both leave the Paris Agreement and reduce their efforts, manifestly, it makes the targets, the goals, harder to reach, or other people will have to step in and do more,” he said in an interview.
His comments come against the backdrop of president Donald Trump taking the US out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.
Environment minister Bhupender Yadav on Wednesday called for reforms to the global governance on climate change. Yadav called upon developed countries to honour their financial and technological commitments, especially the obligations made under the Paris Agreement a decade ago.
“Action is a function, not only of national action, but things can happen at the sub national level, the city level, or even through corporates,” Skea said on the sidelines of the World Sustainable Development Summit by The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) in New Delhi on Thursday.
“One of the things that we did in the last cycle — there were some papers that attempted to work out how much of climate action is attributable to national level policies, and how much is attributable to city and state level. And that analysis would not necessarily stand up at the moment, because the facts have changed,” Skea said.
Despite this, Skea said he had heard promising political statements from world leaders and domain experts about commitments made by various nations towards climate change mitigation. “They say they are committed to the Paris Agreement. Hopefully, that turns out to be right,” he said.
Aiding govt to mitigate climate change
Skea, who has been at the helm of the IPCC since July 2023, clarified that the role of the organisation was to present detailed analytical research to aid government in the mitigation of climate change.
IPCC’s next major research report, which is released once in seven years, is also likely to consider the impacts of geoeconomic fragmentation for the first time, he said. Geoeconomic fragmentation refers to a shift in national policies from a collaborative approach to a self-reliant approach.
The context of operating in a fragmented world “will be part of the mitigation report and also part of the finance chapter in the report. I can only imagine that these topics would be within scope for the next report,” he said.
The report, titled ‘Synthesis Report of the Seventh Assessment Report’ (AR7), is likely to be published in 2029-30. The previous such study, AR6, clarified that human-induced global warming has caused unprecedented changes to the planet, and that future risks will rise with every fraction of a degree of global warming.
Governments in developing countries can focus on social indicators while simultaneously adhering to renewable energy generation and net-zero emission targets, he said.
“It’s quite clear that countries can’t sacrifice the well being of their people in order to promote climate policies. We need to look for the synergies in putting them together. One of the things about the new report that have been agreed, they (the authors) actually place much more emphasis on the integration between climate action and wider development policies and sustainable development. We need to look for the synergies in putting them together,” Skea said.
Skea also indicated that enhancing India’s robust electricity grids could be a potential advantage for the country, at a time when renewable energy generation is concentrated only in North America, Europe, and China. Expansion of renewable energy generation in south Asian countries, including India, is also likely to be cheaper for investor, as the cost of capital is very high in North America, China, and Europe, Skea said.
This is where multilateral development banks could come in, he said, and provide loans that reduce the cost of capital for the private sector. “Because, for sure, there is not enough public sector money in the world to fix the climate problem it needs. It is necessary to leverage private funding.”
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