Reworking net-zero for climate justice

NEWS Along with comparable levels of commitments there need to be equally comparable metrics for well-being.

Global transformation is affecting the planet. But there is no uniform transformation across the world.
Global temperature increased sharply only after 1981 with little contribution from the developing countries as their industrialisation and urbanisation had yet to begin.

INDIA’S CONCERNS

In 2015, at the UN General Assembly when the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 was adopted and at the Paris Conference, the Prime Minister of India stressed a reframing of climate change to climate justice.
He argued that just when countries such as India were becoming major industrial and middle class nations, they should not pay the price for the pollution caused by the West.
The Paris Agreement, explicitly recognises that peaking will take longer for such countries and is to be achieved in the context of “sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty”.
This balance is now being upset for a common target and timetable.

First, inequity is built into the Climate Treaty.
Annual emissions make India the fourth largest emitter, even though climate is impacted by cumulative emissions, with India contributing a mere 3% compared with 26% for the United States and 13% for China.
According to the United Nations, while the richest 1% of the global population emits more than two times the emissions of the bottom 50%, India has just half its population in the middle class and per capita emissions are an eighth of those in the U.S. and less than a third of those of China.
Second, the diplomatic history of climate negotiations shows that longer term goals without the strategy to achieve them, as in the case of finance and technology transfer that focuses on solving a political problem and not the problem itself.
The focus is on physical quantities, emissions of carbon dioxide and increase in global temperature, measures impacts on nature whereas solutions require an analysis of drivers, trends and patterns of resource use.
Third, models on which global policy recommendations for developing countries are based, consider achieving ‘reasonable’ not ‘comparable’ levels of well-being to show that early capping of energy use will not affect their growth ignoring costs on the poor.
These models ignore the fact that it is not the rising prosperity of the world’s poor that endanger the planet, rather the challenge is to change wasteful behaviour in the West.

Infrastructure has a defining role in human well-being both because of the services it provides outside the market and the way it shapes demand distinct from manufacturing (production) and lifestyles (consumption).
But, the vaguely worded ‘net zero’ emissions, balancing emissions and removals, could be disastrous for development of latecomers like India because the current frame fails to recognise that more than half the global cumulative emissions arose from infrastructure, essential for urban well-being.
There is no substitute to cement, steel and construction material. Hence, developing nations like India worldwide will need half the available carbon space before comparable levels with the developed nations are reached around 2050.
Also, because of its young population and late development, much of the future emissions in India will come from infrastructure, buildings and industry, and we cannot shift the trajectory much to reach comparable levels of well-being with major economies.
For example, China’s emissions increased three times in the period 2000-2015, driven largely by infrastructure.

A global goal-shaping national strategy requires a new understanding.
For this, India needs to highlight unique national circumstances with respect to the food, energy and transportation systems that have to change.
Food- consumption of meat contributes to a third of global emissions. Indians eat just 4 kg a year compared with around 68 kg per person for the European Union and twice that in the U.S. where a third of the food is wasted by households.
Transportation- transport emissions account for a quarter of global emissions and are the fastest growing emissions worldwide and have surpassed emissions from generation of electricity in the U.S., but are not on the global agenda.
Energy- Coal accounts for a quarter of global energy use and rising Asia uses three-quarters of it as coal drives industry.
India with abundant reserves and per-capita electricity use that is a tenth that of the U.S. is under pressure to stop using coal, even though the U.S. currently uses more coal.
India wants to eliminate the use of oil instead with renewable energy and hydrogen as a fuel for electrification, whose acceleration requires international cooperation around technology development and transfer.

In the Paris Agreement, climate justice was lowered to the preamble as a political, not policy, statement. Hence, there is need for:

reframing of the global concern in terms of sustainable development for countries with per capita emissions below the global average, in line with the Paris Agreement.
the verifiable measure should be well-being within ecological limits.
international cooperation should centre on sharing technology of electric vehicles and hydrogen as a fuel, as they are the most effective response to climate change.

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/reworking-net-zero-for-climate-justice/article34257195.ece

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