From India's largest newsroom, I'm Arun George and this is the Times of India podcast. The United Nations Climate Change Conference of COP 28 in Dubai ended with delegates applauding the deal that they had achieved after days of uncertainty. Nations participating at the event agreed that global greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut 43% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels, and admitted that nations were off track from earlier promises that had been
made. As per the agreement, nations will take actions towards a tripling of renewable energy capacity and a doubling of energy efficiency improvements by 2030. Nations will also increase efforts to phase down the use of coal power. Nation said they will try phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies and other measures to move away from using fossil fuels. That bit about fossil fuels was at the center of controversy even before the start of COP 28.
A BBC report had said Abu Dhabi was working to sign oil deals with nations while they attended COP 28 in Dubai. A leaked letter showed that a group of oil producing nations were urged to vote against moving away from the use of fossil fuels like oil and natural gas. Before the applause at the end of the summit, a negotiator for Samoa, one of the worst hit nations in the world, pointed out that not enough progress had been made in Dubai.
We have come to the conclusion that the cost correction that is needed has not been secured. We have made an incremental advancement over business as usual when what we really needed is an exponential step change in our actions and support. In today's episode, we look at what has been achieved in Dubai and whether it's enough given the very real threat of climate change in our lifetimes. Our guest is Aditya Bahadur,
who's been on the show before. Aditya is chair of the Research and strategy team and principal researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, or IIED. We started by asking him how he viewed the summer and delegate statement that not enough had been achieved. Aditya, who's seen plenty of cop meetings, says despite all the cynicism, there is some reason for cheer. People like me who've been at it for a long time feel like there's some reason to be cheerful.
Of course we haven't gone the entire distance in terms of putting science front and center, but we've travelled quite a lot to get here. And I say that for a couple of reasons. One is the emphasis on the transitioning out of fossil fuels. I think acknowledged that there's a science base for what we're trying to do. So I we can't say that science was being ignored entirely. However, what one needs to recognize is that a cop process is a political process, not a
scientific process. So there's always give and take and there's always room to do more. So I think science was acknowledged. Maybe not to the optimal degree, but there's reason to be careful. But Aditya Bahadur also admits that there was a massive shortcoming in the final
agreement. Where I feel very disappointed, where I feel like scientific insights are being ignored, is on adaptation, which is the field of work to help the vulnerable people deal with the impacts of climate change that we are facing here and now. And overall, there is consensus amongst all of us who work on climate adaptation. But not enough was done to recognize the immense amount of damage that people are suffering at the moment.
And not enough money and political will was mobilized to help people adapt to climate change. One thing that a lot was made of with COP 28, and it's it came before COP 28 began. It was happening during COP 28. COP 28 was being in a held in a state where the chief revenue source is fossil fuels. That's the case with COP 29 as well, where people are pointing out that Azerbaijan is not exactly going to support tuning our fossil fuels. So how do you view then this final declaration on fossil
fuels? I think it's a very substantial game and I feel like we need to acknowledge that. And the transitioning away is a very positive development. Ideally it should have been phasing out, there's no doubt about that. But this is a messy political process that's give and take, and the fact that we've settled on transitioning away I think is great.
The thing with fossil fuels is, especially in the West, you are now seeing more and more intense protests even in during Corp, that you need to end the use of fossil fuel. Why is it so difficult for us to accept that we need to phase out fossil fuels? Is there no way it can be accepted quickly enough? Foundation of the modern global economy is fossil fuel. Even I sometimes when I think about fossil fuel, I think about fuel that we put in our cars.
But it's so much more than that. It's the plastic that we consume. You know, there's every part of our own system is linked very closely to fossil fuels. Our modern way of life is closely in blind with prostitute. All our infrastructure is built around the use of fossil fuels. So it is about recalibrating the very fiber of how we live our daily life moment to moment. And I think that kind of a shift takes time and takes a lot of
political wins. The other dimension of it is lots of very strong economic interests linked to the use of fossil fuels and linked to those economic interests of political interests. And unless we can figure out how to change incentives, we're never going to make the progress that, you know, this is what makes it too hard.
And while scientific clarity on the fact that we are all driving towards literally driving towards a Cliff edge where we're going to reach environmental tipping points is 1 very strong incentive to move away from it. I think we need to develop alternative approaches to supporting the modern economic way of life that is happening slowly and until that gathers momentum, I think this is going to continue being a problem so. Why is a consensus on? What seems?
To be a problem that's here and now, so difficult to achieve, there seems to be a huge problem. Like, it's almost like the pandemic that you sort of hit emergency stations. And yet over here we seem to move at a sort of glacial pace. Is this how we've always been? And this is perhaps how we'll see it go even in the future. Yeah, I wish I had a satisfactory answer to that question. The only thing that I can say one is that I really think progress has been made.
If one looks at, you know, where we are on some of these very critical agendas and basically acknowledging that we have to transition away from fossil fuels permanently, that was unthinkable earlier. The second thing that I can only think about is why it's so difficult is because there's so many political and economic complexities that are tied into what we need to do to deal with the impacts of climate change.
You know, changing the modern way of life that is intrinsically bound to the use of fossil fuels includes ships on so many fronts simultaneously. That just cannot happen as fast as we need it to happen. So I think frustration is justified because we have a limited time and a limited carbon budget that we are blowing with alacrity at the moment. And I certainly don't agree that we don't have any examples of progress being made on other similar fronts with the scale
and urgency needed. Beginning with the ozone crisis is a positive case study that we need to learn that was dealt with and has largely been solved. And it was, well, nothing is as complex as dealing with climate change on a global scale, but it was comparable in terms of the cooperation needed by the kind of economic and political interests that needed to align to agree on the monetary protocol that has played a massive role in plugging the ozone hole over the last few decades.
So yeah, I mean, sorry for that wishy washy answer, but that's the best that I can give you. Another major part of the COP 28 agreement is the mention of energy transition away from coal, as well as introducing greater energy efficiency. While there have been criticisms of these provisions as being too vague, we asked Aditya Badur what he thought of this part of
the agreement. I think that clear acknowledgement that we need to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency improvements over the next seven years, I think it's a pretty categorical and a pretty important step forward. I'm sure others in an ideal world would like much more, but we have to acknowledge where we are and where they're going to. So I would not concede that it's been big in terms of renewable energy.
Yes, it's an expansion of the use of solar, wind, certain kinds of hydroelectric power as well. And in terms of energy efficiency, it's about increasing it from 2% to 4% annually by 20-30 energy efficiency simply, I'm sure there's a technical definition out there, but it's simply about trying to do the same thing by using less energy. So light up a room to the tune of 100 Watt bulb and in canvassing bulb but do it with whatever 8 watts or something that an LED bulb does.
The one part of the final agreement that Aditya Bhadur is critical about is the funding to adapt to climate change and to deal with its effects. India, like many other nations, is estimated to be losing lives and economic growth due to climate linked events like heat waves, droughts, floods and
cyclones. We asked Aditya Bhadur about his views on climate change linked finance, given that a fund for loss and damage due to climate change has been created at COP 28. So where my it's optimism falls away in on the climate finance story where I think the COP has given me no reason to see the glass as half full or very little reason, at least less than the other things. With all agreed that rich countries need to provide $100 billion a year, when nowhere near that.
An extremely dodgy, highly spurious calculation puts the 2021 figure at 89 billion, but which has been by and large criticized by all serious players. A more accurate figure I think is around the 25 billion mark which is 1/4 or what has been agreed. Now, The funny thing is that even as this promise has not been met, what we need to deal with the kind of climate change that we're facing has massively increased. And by some estimates, it stands with something like $800 billion
a year. And this is for reducing greenhouse gases and helping people adapt. For adaptation alone, the figure is something within the range of 200 to $400 billion a year. And just to put that in perspective, only 200 million also have been pledged to the adaptation fund, which is one of a one very important fund. So we are kind of nowhere near the kind of money that's needed.
And even if you include the $700 million that has been notionally pledged for the loss and damage fund, that's nowhere near what we need. And one must remember that the $700 million isn't fresh and additional money. It is redistributed largely from within the same envelope of money that countries were making available to deal with climate
change. Despite science indicating that human activity is contributing to global weather changes, there's still no shortage of scepticism given the changes needed in our lifestyles to deal with climate change. Aditya Bhador admits that he's encountered the skepticism himself, but says there's now no escaping the potential impacts of climate change. You know, oftentimes people come up to me and say the world has existed for billions of years
when there was much more carbon. It'll exist, I said. Yes, of course the world will continue to exist, but it just won't have human beings in it. So what will Aditya Bhadur be watching for in COP 29, which will be held in Azerbaijan next year? Unsatisfactory progress was made on agreeing on a global goal for climate adaptation, Just as we have the critical thresholds of two degree rise and 1.5° rise.
On the mitigation part, we don't really have any comparable target that the global community is working towards an adaptation. Not much progress on this was made at this call, so we'd like to see some kind of a substantial agreement happening around that. The second thing is we would like to see more detail on how this loss and damage fund the $700 million that can agree how that's going to operate when money is going to be distributed, who is going to be eligible for it.
I'd like to see that number go up overall in the next cup. I think climate finance needs to be front and center and this not only includes enhancing the quantity of climate finance, which is ruefully inadequate at the moment, but also much more agreement and progress on the quality and nature of this
finance. For instance, at the moment it's widely acknowledged that a lot of the finance goes to national level, actors, institutions, ministries, etcetera, whereas the people who are suffering most from climate change are at the local level, at the village level for instance. And money really doesn't reach these people.
So we would like to see progress on new mechanisms through which local actors and institutions can receive the financing and the decision making ability to withstand climate change. Like you said, you've seen it over 2 decades. How is it to be looking at the science of it and be looking at the political progress of it when you know it is proceeding this incrementally? Given you look at things as 1/2 glass full, when you view 20 years of it, do you still view
it as half glass full? I still do, of course. I'm not trying to paper over the fact that we're not taking action as urgently as we need to, but it was inconceivable even a few years ago that the countries of the world would come together to jointly agree on transitioning away from fossil fuels, the kind of entrenched positions that existed in these deliberations. Only a few years ago, it was
inconceivable. In this COP we have seen a clear commitment to transition away from the use of fossil fuels over the next few decades, which I think is a massive achievement anywhere you look at it. Of course we can acknowledge that the language around transitioning away isn't as hard or as scientific as we would like, but it is a massive step
change. So I still maintain my position as a glass half full person and want to reinstate my faith in the very complex multilateral process and this form of messy cooperation that's needed between nations to arrive at the path forward. Today's episode was produced by Jayaraj Singh and Sahil Gupta. For a daily spotlight on people, ideas, and stories that matter, subscribe to us.
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