Context:

• Recently the 24^th Session of the of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 24) was held in Katowice, Poland on 02^nd– 15^th December 2018.
• During the COP, nations overcame divisions to agree global climate pact rules for limiting temperature rise to below 2°Celsius
• However Indian participants are disappointed with the outcome.

Key issues for COP 24:

• Finalization of guidelines/ modalities/ rules for the implementation of Paris Agreement
• The conclusion of 2018 Facilitative Talanoa Dialogue
• Stocktake of Pre-2020 actions implementation and ambition

Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities:

• The guidance on Nationally Determined Contributions preserves the determined nature of NDCs and provides for Parties to submit different types of contributions including adaptation.
• The guidance on adaptation recognizes the needs of developing countries and is built on the overarching principle of CBDR-RC.

Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF)

• India has been in favor of a robust transparency regime, and the finalized Enhanced Transparency Framework builds upon the existing guidelines while providing flexibilities for developing countries.
• The guidance on finance provisions operationalize the obligation of developed countries in providing means of implementation to developing countries.
• It recognizes the need for climate finance to be new and additional and climate specific.
• The framework for technology recognizes the need for enhanced support towards operationalization of the framework and comprehensively covers all stages of technology development and transfer.

Unsolved issues

• Key questions on whether developed countries would come good on earlier commitments to make available $100 billion annually by 2020 remained unsolved.
• Moreover, a fundamental tenet — that developed countries and developing countries have ‘differentiated’ responsibilities towards addressing global greenhouse gas emissions — appeared to be threatened

Global Stocktake (GST)

• The GST refers to a periodic appraisal by countries on where the world stands vis-à-vis emissions and what more needs to be done.
• This would form the basis for countries taking the call on increasing their emission cuts.
• The global stocktake will provide countries with the basis for strengthening their actions and submitting new national climate commitments in the two years following each successive global stocktake.
• Equity is specifically mentioned in Article 14 of the Paris Agreement.
• It is the basic principle of the Convention and the Paris Agreement.
• The entire GST exercise is lopsided as the process of technical assessment does not fully address equity.

Ignoring Carbon Credits:

• There is the outstanding issue of what happens to carbon credits.
• These are essentially carbon emissions that would normally have gone into the atmosphere but were prevented, due to alternate, cleaner alternatives adopted by developing countries.
• Developed countries are expected to pay for such credits via market-based trading mechanisms but these have been dismantled because of concerns over whether these reductions were real and measurable.
• The countries are not willing to find a solution to this as it has been postponed once again.

Source:PIB