Has India finally woken up to its responsibility towards proper implementation of Paris Agreement?
The year 2021 would mark the beginning of implementation of the Paris Agreement. And at the fag end of 2020, the government of India has constituted a High-level Ministerial Committee for implementation of the Paris Agreement, but the Committee does not have representatives from the states that would actually be implementing those programmes on the ground.
Calling it as yet another move that “re-affirms India’s seriousness to ‘walk the talk’ on climate change”, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) has constituted a high-level inter-ministerial Apex Committee for Implementation of Paris Agreement (AIPA).
The Committee, AIPA, to be chaired by the Secretary, MoEF&CC, will generate a coordinated response on climate change matters that ensures India is on track towards meeting its obligations under the Paris Agreement, including its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC).
The gazette notification in this regard was issues on November 27, 2020.
The government has roped in senior officials from as many as 14 ministries to be members of the AIPA. This Committee will oversee the progress in implementation of India’s NDC and receive periodic information updates to monitor, review and revisit climate goals to fulfil the requirements of the Paris Agreement.
However, the main role that the AIPA is expected to play is that of a national level regulator to regulate the carbon markets in India under the Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. It will also need to formulate guidelines for consideration of projects or activities under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, issue guidelines on carbon pricing, market mechanism, and other similar instruments that have a bearing on climate change and NDCs.
The tricky part comes where the MoEF&CC has declared that AIPA will “take note of the contributions of the private sector as well as multi-/bi-lateral agencies in the field of climate change and provide guidance for aligning their climate actions with national priorities.”
Ahead of the year 2021 that marks the beginning of implementation of the Paris Agreement, the government has claimed that the constitution of AIPA is “central to strengthening the national systems and institutional arrangements for implementation and monitoring of climate actions.”
Why was this necessary?
India is a Party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which has the objective to achieve stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.
India has earlier ratified the Kyoto Protocol and the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol under the UNFCCC and accordingly constituted the National CDM Authority (NCDMA) in 2003. India has ratified the Paris Agreement to enhance the implementation of the Convention and has submitted its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) in 2015 for implementation of the Paris Agreement in the post-2020 period.
The NDC has eight goals, including three quantitative goals viz. reduction in the emissions intensity of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 33 to 35 per cent by 2030 from 2005 level; achieving about 40 per cent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel based energy resources by 2030; and creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.
As per the government records, the implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement dealing with market, non-market and voluntary approaches, necessitate an inter-ministerial committee to supersede the National CDM Authority (NCDMA) constituted under the Kyoto Protocol. The Paris Agreement also envisages an ‘enhanced transparency framework’ with new modalities, procedures and guidelines (MPG) for the post-2020 period which will supersede the existing Monitoring, Review and Verification (MRV) system.
States and Union Territories not on-board?
While announcing the constitution of the Apex Committee for Implementation of Paris Agreement (AIPA), the government stated the “purpose” as that of “ensuring a coordinated response on climate change matters that protects the country’s interests and ensures that India is on track towards meeting its climate change obligations under the Paris Agreement including its submitted NDCs.”
While coordinated response is exactly what is needed, it cannot just be a coordination between Government of India’s various ministries. Most of the programmes under Adaptation and Mitigation are run by various state governments. The different state and Union Territories run their own Climate Change programmes under different nomenclature involving various ground level line departments.
The changing climate is a serious threat to India’s economy, lives and livelihood and India is already witnessing extreme weather events such as droughts, floods at an alarmingly high frequency and intensity. There are State Action Plans on Climate Change (SAPCC) that do give importance to local actions and decisions. As any policies regarding climate change can and will have a bearing on the lives and livelihoods of the vulnerable communities from remote/tribal locations to urban population too.
So why are these players not involved? After all, water and soil (that is used for agriculture, forests and even any kind of infrastructure) are concurrent list subjects.
