As pledges fall short, India says advance net zero target

GLASGOW: With all ‘net zero’ announcements and commitments made so far, put together, not meeting the warming limit target of the Paris Agreement, India has appealed to the big historical emitters to become carbon neutral by 2030 instead of going for it 20 years later.
“They (developed countries) all should go for ‘net zero’ by 2030 in view of urgency, considering what the recent IPCC report warned,” India’s environment minister Bhupender Yadav said while responding to a question on UNEP’s analysis that found that all the commitments/announcements put together won’t let the world meet the Paris Agreement goal of keeping the warming limit within 2° Celsius by the end of the century from the pre-industrial level (1850-1900).

Both UNEP and the Climate Action Tracker in their analysis found that all the commitments and announcements are, in fact, far below the required pledges of emission cuts needed to keep global warming below the aspiration goal of 1.5° C rise during the century. The world has already experienced global warming of 1.1° C over the pre-industrial level. The IPCC warned that global warming will reach 1.5° C in the next two decades in the business-as-usual scenario, leading to disastrous consequences of climate change.

Yadav, who is here to lead the Indian negotiators at COP26, said India has been well on track to meet whatever it promised as part of its nationally-determined contributions in 2015 and the country would definitely meet its climate neutrality goal backed by what the Prime Minister had announced last week.