What does it mean to achieve this goal?

“The funding and accountability demands of national governments, including India, have merit. However, the same principles should apply to national processes and projects designed to deliver development and combat climate change,” Kanchi Kohli, a legal policy researcher, told me. The demand for global climate finance should result in debt-free distribution at all scales. Climate finance should learn from the history of debt-driven development.

This is also what makes processes such as loss and damage as important as achieving net zero emissions. The loss and damage fund, created in 2022 after 30 years of struggle, was a major victory for developing countries.

“Climate finance from rich countries to developing countries is urgently needed, and in enormous amounts. The new collective quantified objective on climate finance cannot allow carbon markets used for compensation purposes to be considered as climate finance. Khaled Diab of Carbon Market Watch noted this.

Adaptation still remains an important but neglected issue and according to the experiences of COP28. Assessment and planning must be completed by 2025, while monitoring and evaluation must be carried out by 2030.

Apart from direct impacts, these discussions will also have hidden impacts, such as that on coal mining exploration in India. Like Indonesia, India has raised the possibility of co-powering coal-fired power plants with biomass, thereby delaying their decommissioning, Lahiri noted.

India has a great opportunity to lead a democratic, diverse and inclusive model to combat climate change, both domestically and globally. Being part of a decision-making process can not only make a significant difference in outcomes, but also in how solutions are found. designed and how fees are collected, adds Kohli.

(Opinions are personal)

Sushmita Verma | Independent journalist based in Mumbai