As the year draws to a close, it has been put on record by scientists that this has been one of the warmest years of the past decade, rife with heat waves, rising sea levels and that most of these find their roots in climate change. Every year, at the Conference of Parties (COP), under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), nations discuss how they can work together to mitigate the impact of climate change. There have been several watershed moments in these negotiations, the latest being the 2015 Paris Agreement, which was signed by almost 200 countries. The provisions of this agreement are expected to come into effect in 2020, so the latest COP in Katowice, Poland-the 24th such meeting-focused on its implementation. While more than 200 nations (minus the US) agreed on implementing the Paris Rulebook at Katowice, there was a general sense that pledges made three years ago were insufficient.

In Paris, there was talk of nations going ahead with nationally determined contributions to tilt the balance in favour of keeping the rising global temperature less than the 2°C above pre-industrial levels­-beyond which the consequences could be catastrophic. To limit global warming to 1.5°C, all nations have to halve their emissions by 2030. While China and India have invested heavily in renewables, many others remain non-committal. While the Paris Rulebook makes it mandatory for nations to report on all aspects of climate finance, getting developing countries to collate and report on this is hard as many of them lack the knowhow.

Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general of the Centre for Science and Environment, says, "Countries are now on their own to mitigate, to adapt and to pay the cost of climate impacts. The UNFCCC is now a platform to collect and synthesise information, and provide a forum to discuss and debate. It doesn't have the tools to drive global collective action to combat climate change. One needs to question the raison d'être of the UNFCCC."

In 2015, developing countries had demanded transfer of technology and money to mitigate and adapt to climate change. While developed countries had agreed to raise roughly $100 billion a year into the climate kitty starting 2020, they are way off their target as of now. In Katowice, the finance issue was to be fleshed out and given teeth, but unfortunately there seems to be lowered accountability after the COP. Developed countries can now choose to fulfil their financial commitments through a mix of loans, grants, aids, and there is very little accountability if they decide to renege.

The US, Kuwait, Russia, Saudi Arabia and some others have refused to acknowledge the grim findings of the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, commissioned by the United Nations, which was released in October. While the new report highlighted how 1.5°C rather than 2°C was the new tipping point, these nations wanted to keep the report out of the conference. The report sounds the warning bell saying there's a window of 12 years within which countries must act to prevent further damage.

As per Bhushan, "This COP will be remembered as anti-science for its failure to take into account the findings of the IPCC's Special Report on 1.5°C. It will be remembered for coming out with a rulebook that dilutes an already weak Paris Agreement."

The stage seems set to take stock of the long battle at hand in the next meeting in Chile in December 2019.