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With the Paris Climate Deal set to come into effect in 2020, nearly 200 countries gathered at Katowice in Poland to adopt a set of rules to limit global warming.

INTRODUCTION-

• The global fight against climate change reached another milestone when negotiators from 196 countries finalized a rulebook for the 2015 Paris Agreement.
• The finalization paves the way for implementation of the Paris Agreement, which is supposed to replace the existing Kyoto Protocol in 2020.

What were the key issues at the conference?

• After the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, the conference was mandated to finalize the modalities, procedures, and guidelines, called the “Paris Rulebook”.
• The Paris Agreement called for keeping a global average temperature rise this century to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.
• The other two key issues at the conference were the conclusion of the 2018 Facilitative Talanoa Dialogue and the stock-taking exercise on pre-2020 implementation and ambition.

BACKGROUND-

#What is the Paris Agreement?

It is an agreement within the UNFCCC dealing with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance starting in the year 2020. The Paris Accord is considered as a turning point for global climate policy.

Aims:

• The central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
• It further aims at pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
• The agreement aims to increase the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change.
• It also aims at making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.

#What are INDCs?

• INDCs are a declaration of individual countries which indicate what post-2020 climate actions they intend to take under a new international agreement, known as their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).
• The INDCs combine the top-down system of a United Nations climate agreement with bottom-up system-in elements through which countries put forward their agreements in the context of their own national circumstances, capabilities and priorities, within the ambition to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.
• The INDCs will not only contain steps taken towards emission reductions, but also aim to address steps taken to adapt to climate change impacts, and what support the country needs-or will provide to address climate change.

India’s INDC :

What was the main outcome?

• After two weeks of negotiations, the Katowice conference finalized a 133-page rulebook for implementation of the Paris Agreement, which was unanimously adopted by all member countries.
• The guidelines set out how countries will provide information about their Nationally Determined Contributions describing their domestic climate actions, mitigation and adaptation measures.
• The global stock-take also takes into consideration loss and damage due to adverse effects of climate change. However, the conference could not reach consensus on voluntary market mechanisms.

What was agreed at COP24?

• Countries settled on most of the tricky elements of the “rulebook” for putting the 2015 Paris agreement into practice.
• This includes how governments will measure, report on and verify their emissions-cutting efforts, a key element because it ensures all countries are held to proper standards and will find it harder to wriggle out of their commitments.
• This global deal is meant for climate actions by all the countries across the globe post-2020.

 

What it contains?

• The Katowice package includes guidelines that will operationalize the transparency framework. It sets out how countries will provide information about their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that describe their domestic climate actions.
• This information includes mitigation and adaptation measures as well as details of financial support for climate action in developing countries.
• Besides transparency framework, the Katowice package also includes guidelines that relate to the process for establishing new targets on finance from 2025 onwards to follow-on from the current target of mobilizing $100 billion per year from 2020 to support developing countries.
• It also includes how to conduct the Global Stocktake (GST) of the effectiveness of climate action in 2023 and how to assess progress on the development and transfer of technology.

 

The significance of the rulebook:

• The global rules are important to ensure that each tonne of emissions released into the atmosphere is accounted for.
• In this way, progress towards the emission limitation goals of the Paris Agreement can be accurately measured.
• Currently, the climate actions of rich nations for the pre-2020 period are being guided by the Kyoto Protocol.

Has the rulebook addressed all issues it was meant to look at?

One important element could not be agreed upon and had to be deferred for until next year. This relates to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement which talks about setting up a market mechanism for trading of carbon emissions.

An emissions trading system already exists under the Kyoto Protocol, though it has become ineffective over the last few years and is meant to end with the end of Kyoto Protocol in 2020.

Why did it take so long?

• There was a row over carbon credits, which are awarded to countries for their emissions-cutting efforts and their carbon sinks, such as forests, which absorb carbon.
• These credits count towards countries’ emissions-cutting targets. Brazil, which hopes to benefit from its large rainforest cover, insisted on a new form of wording that critics said would allow double counting of credits, undermining the integrity of the system. This issue has been put off until next year.

Any other highlights?

• The US continued to obstruct the climate action talks on coal. The US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait objected to “welcoming” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on global warming.

What wasn’t agreed?

• Largely absent from these talks, which had a technical focus, was the key question of how countries will step up their targets on cutting emissions.
• On current targets, the world is set for 3C of warming from pre-industrial levels, which scientists say would be disastrous, resulting in droughts, floods, sea level rises and the decline of agricultural productivity.

 

When will that be agreed?

The key deadline is 2020, when countries must show they have met targets set a decade ago for cutting their emissions, and when they must affirm new, much tougher targets.

 

What does the science say?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global body of the world’s leading climate scientists, warned two months ago that allowing warming to reach 1.5C above pre-industrial levels would have grave consequences, including the die-off of coral reefs and devastation of many species.

 

How long have we got?

If we extrapolate from the IPCC’s findings, the world has little more than a decade to bring emissions under control and halve them, which would help to stabilize the climate.

 

Are we getting there?

After years in which the world’s carbon emissions appeared to be stabilising, they are on the rise again. Coal use continues and oil is still the engine of much of the world’s economy. Clean energy is coming on-stream at a faster rate than many predicted, and the costs of it have come down rapidly, but its adoption needs to be speeded up.

 

Infrastructure, such as energy generation plants, transport networks and buildings, is a central issue: infrastructure built now to rely on high-carbon energy effectively locks in high emissions for decades to come. Some people are also saying we need to invest in projects to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

 

What happens next?

• The UN will meet again next year in Chile to thrash out the final elements of the Paris rulebook and begin work on future emissions targets. But the crunch conference will come in 2020, when countries must meet the deadline for their current emissions commitments and produce new targets for 2030 and beyond that go further towards meeting scientific advice.
• That conference may be held in the UK or Italy, both of which have bid to be hosts. The UK’s intention in offering to host is to signal it will retain its role on the world stage after Brexit. The event may also provide a welcome change from wranglings over Brexit and intractable trade deals.

What was India’s response?

• India reaffirmed its commitment to meeting the goals under the Paris Agreement and engaged in all the negotiations while protecting its key interests, including climate justice.
• But it expressed strong reservation over the lack of equity in the global stock-take decision, a proposed five-yearly review of the impact of countries’ climate change actions.
• India had expected that decisions would be in consonance with the principles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris pact.

What were the negotiations on climate finance?

• The guidelines on finance provisions operationalized the obligation of developed countries to provide the means of implementation to developing countries, while recognizing the need for separate and additional finance for climate action.
• This includes guidelines for establishing new climate finance targets from 2025 onwards to follow on from the target of mobilizing $100 billion a year from 2020 to support developing countries.
• The rulebook spells out what kinds of financial flows can be classified as climate finance, how they should be accounted for, and the kind of information about them needed to be submitted.

ANALYSIS-

• Katowice seems to have succeeded in instilling a modicum of strictness, establishing a tough apparatus for countries to share detailed information on their respective climate actions.
• There has been, the delegates argue, some improvement on the prickly issues of transparency and climate finance: the rule book has ensured that a compliance commission would step in to address breaches committed by tardy nation states.
• This is not to suggest that the talks were an unequivocal success. Before the conference came to an end, India’s lead negotiator had stated that the principle of equity had not been adhered to in the case of the ‘global stock-take’ in 2023, an exercise that is meant to assess whether the sum total of interventions implemented by all nations is enough to keep the global average temperature near or, hopefully, below two degree Celsius at pre-industrial levels.
• Finances remain asymmetrical. There is no provision yet to extend the commitment by richer countries to finance the Green Climate Fund beyond 2025 — the year their pledge expires.
• Ominously, the global solidarity that had been achieved to act against climate change is fraying, with the United States of America leading the pack of climate-change sceptics. Katowice has not achieved enough to stem this tide.

CONCLUSION 

• The key objective of the meeting is to adopt the implementation guidelines of the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

  This is crucial because it ensures the true potential of the Paris Agreement can be unleashed, including ramping up climate action so that the central goal of the agreement can be achieved, namely to hold the global average temperature to as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

 

Note4Students – A prelims question can be framed from any of the given details.

CONTEXT 

As more than 50 ministers and world leaders met in Argentina for this year’s G20 summit, they will have three priorities in mind: the future of work, infrastructure for development and sustainable food production.

 

INTRODUCTION

• The recent 13^th G20 summit in Buenos Aires was a success because at least it managed to issue a Joint Communique, unlike in the case of the APEC summit which took place in Papua New Guinea in October when the two economic giants, the US and China, did not agree on a joint communique.
• Communiques matter. While they are non-binding in the legal sense, they are binding in the political sense. Leaders and officials fight tooth-and-nail over the commitments included in the communique.
• These commitments are used to pressure countries into action. Countries use them to sell difficult reforms domestically. Skillful politicians use them to leverage domestic legislatures.
• When observed over time, the commitments in APEC and G20 communique reveal the unmistakable power of multilateral forums to build a global consensus on some of the most pressing challenges facing the world.

 

About G20:

• Formed in 1999, the G20 is an international forum of the governments and central bank governors from 20 major economies.

• Collectively, the G20 economies account for around 85 percent of the Gross World Product (GWP), 80 percent of world trade.
• To tackle the problems or the address issues that plague the world, the heads of governments of the G20 nations periodically participate in summits. In addition to it, the group also hosts separate meetings of the finance ministers and foreign ministers.
• The G20 has no permanent staff of its own and its chairmanship rotates annually between nations divided into regional groupings.
• The first G20 Summit was held in Berlin in December 1999 and was hosted by the finance ministers of Germany and Canada.

 

Objectives:

• The Group was formed with an aim of studying, reviewing, and promoting high-level discussion of policy issues pertaining to the promotion of international financial stability.
• The forum aims to pre-empt balance of payments problems and turmoil on financial markets by improved coordination of monetary, fiscal, and financial policies.
• The forum seeks to address issues that go beyond the responsibilities of any one organisation.

 

Member Countries:

The members of the G20 consist of 19 individual countries plus the European Union (EU).

• The 19 member countries of the forum are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States.
• The European Union is represented by the European Commission and by the European Central Bank.

 

• Shaktikanta Das, the former Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), has been appointed as India’s G20 Sherpa till December 31, 2018 for the Development Track of the G20 summit.
• A Sherpa is a personal representative of the leader of a member country at an international Summit meeting such as the G8, G20 or the Nuclear Security Summit and are responsible for thrashing out the details before the meeting of the leaders.

 

The G20 Troika

Every year, when a new country assumes the presidency (Argentina in 2018), it works hand in hand with the previous presidency (Germany) and the next presidency (Japan) in what is known as the troika. This ensures continuity in the group’s agenda.

Significance of G20

Together, the G20 members represent –

• 2/3rd of the world population.
• 85% of the global gross product.
• 75% of international trade.
• 80% of global investments in research and development.

Because the G-20 is a forum, its agreements or decisions have no legal impact, but they do influence countries’ policies and global cooperation.

Takeaways for India @ 13^th G20 Summit

JAI

• It was the first meeting among the three leaders of Japan, India and USA. Currently, India’s relation with Japan and America are the best that they have ever been. All the three countries are democracies therefore, in terms of values; they are on the same page.
• What really brings them together at the moment is the convergence of interests such as ensuring stability, prosperity, and security in the Indo-Pacific region. Greater importance was also given to India in terms of economic, political and security architecture by both countries.
• Free, open, inclusive and rules-based order is essential for regional peace and prosperity. The Prime Minister also offered some ideas on how JAI countries should take forward on the concept of Indo-Pacific and how the three countries can work together to promote this concept.
• These meetings were useful and they should continue on the margins of subsequent G-20 meetings.
• Japan, India, and the USA are also engaged in Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (initiated in 2007 and reestablished in 2017) in parallel with joint military exercises of an unprecedented scale, called Exercise Malabar. Such dialogues are important in providing a counterbalance to tensions created in South China by especially China.

 

China issue

• In the last few years, China has expanded its influence and assertiveness in the region particularly in the South China Sea.
• It continues to create and occupy more islands and militarize them in the South China Sea despite opposition from the neighboring countries like the Philippines and ASEAN as well.
• This has also brought India, US and Japan together.

 

Action on economic offenders

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented a nine-point programme on ways to take action against fugitive economic offenders. India managed to push through a clause in the final communiquéwhich calls for a universal law which allows the assets of economic offenders in other nations to be frozen, and their repatriation expedited. 
• This is significant given that some defaulters have fled the country after transferring assets abroad.

 

RIC

• Leaders of India, China and Russia called for reforming multilateral institutions, including the United Nations (UN) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as they understood the benefits of a multilateral trading system and an open world economy for global growth.
• They also agreed to have regular consultations to jointly promote international and regional peace and stability, to strengthen cooperation through BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and the East Asia Summit (EAS) mechanisms, to address global challenges such as terrorism and climate change.

 

Criticism Insufficiently legitimate

 

• The G20 is in a dangerous downward spiral of its own. Much like Argentina, it requires a return to global cooperation if it is to break out of it. US President Donald Trump has made the upcoming G20 meeting all about his bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
• But if the G20 is to find durable long-term solutions to the challenges facing the world, it cannot allow itself to be sidelined so easily into a Trump-style Punch-and-Judy show. Global challenges require global solutions.
• The consensus approach is now being aggressively challenged. It leaves many wondering whether this week’s G20 meeting will be doomed to the same fate as that of APEC.
• President Trump is no fan of the G20. His extreme views and unreasonable demands mean that G20 meetings quickly become the ‘G19 versus one’. Bilateral dealing is designed to help him circumvent this problem. He has created a great deal of hype about his bilateral meeting with President Xi. 

No permanent secretariat

• Simultaneously, the informal structure of the G20, with a rotating chair and no permanent secretariat, means that agendas are determined each year by the chair and so can swing widely, and formal mechanisms to monitor follow-through on countries’ public commitments are weak.

Bias

• The G20 is composed of 20 large and important economies. This creates a situation in which small countries have to follow their big brothers, in order to survive.
• The main threat to the G20’s effectiveness is its lack of domestic legitimacy within member countries. The group is widely perceived by the public as transnational elites hatching plans behind closed doors in insulated centers of power.

• The US had a big presence and clearly, the most unpredictable and volatile President Trump dominated the entire meeting and the Communique echoed Trump’s words regarding the need to reform the WTO and the world trading system.
• Without genuine ex-ante engagement to build trust and support with diverse domestic constituencies such as labor, business, civil society, and the members of parliaments and congresses that purportedly represent these different interests — leaders will never have space within the G20 to negotiate meaningful agreements.

Failed to live up to the expectations

• Finance ministers and heads of state now come to the table with their hands tied, their positions determined in advance by their governments and a formal script that precludes meaningful and creative compromises.
• And the problem only increases once leaders leave summits to return home. Bound internationally by public commitments, but without the ability to get those agendas enacted at home, the effective implementation of commitments is even weaker than the ability of leaders to forge meaningful agreements in the first place.
• The G20 summit has in effect become a G30 because countries unhappy about being frozen out of the club have turned up anyway.

More showoff and less efficient

• Meetings have become talkfests and photo opportunities. The willingness to come together in the hostile environment of late 2008 and early 2009 has entirely dissipated.
• The G20 agenda utterly fails to break with the tired, broken policies of the free market.

• Today the 20 countries have a different identity than when G20 was founded. Intended to be setting a framework for global governance, it has become a stage for an increasing number of authoritarian and populist leaders.  This year, the controversial presence of Prince Salman bin Mohammad of Saudi Arabia created a stir.
• The G20 summits come at a great cost, especially for a country like Argentina which is still reeling under high inflation and an austerity drive.

What impact does the G20 have?

The G20 is the most important forum for international cooperation. During the meetings, the main challenges of the world are discussed and the main policies are coordinated at the global level. In the face of an uncertain international context, international cooperation is key, and thus the G20 acquires even more relevance.

The main achievements of the G20 include:

• the increased participation of emerging countries in global issues,
• the reform of international financial institutions,
• the monitoring of national financial institutions,
• the improvement in the regulations of the economies whose problems led to the crisis and the creation of safety nets to prevent problems in the future.

The G20 also specifically helped to provide emergency funds during the 2008 crisis and plays an important role in financing for development. 

Conclusion:

• Differences aside, the global alliances played out on the G20 stage are a reminder of the benefits of having such a forum to establish consensus on the issues that matter.
• They might not always deliver on the promises made but such platforms give hope of talk followed by meaningful action.
• It is only when their leaders sit down together that there is a real chance of finding collective solutions to globally pressing issues.
• The G20 is capable of delivering practical outcomes if countries use it strategically.

 

The complete story can be found here – 

G20 : Economic Cooperation ahead