BASIC nations push for ‘climate finance’

The top climate change negotiators from Brazil, South Africa, China and India (BASIC) convened in Delhi recently to push for developed countries on their earlier commitment to providing $100 billion annually from 2020. The meet was held ahead of the United Nations Conference of Parties (COP24) to be held in December, in Katowice, Poland.

About Katowice Conference:

• The representatives from at least 190 countries, think-tanks, and activists will converge in Katowice, Poland to try to agree on a Rule Book that will specify how countries will agree to take forward commitments taken at the 21st COP in Paris in 2015.
• In CoP21 in Paris, the countries had agreed to take steps to limit global warming to 2C below pre-industrial levels and “as far as possible” limit it to 1.5C before the end of the century.

About BASIC meeting:

• This 27th BASIC meet chaired by Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India expressed their “deepest concern” over some developed nations’ attempting at unilaterally applying new eligibility criteria for developing countries’ access to funding under the Global Environmental Facility and the Green Climate Fund.
• Such criteria, according to the ministers, “are not compatible with guidance from the Conference of the Parties and are a departure from the letter and spirit of the Convention and its Paris Agreement.
• The BASIC ministers urged developed countries to honor their commitments and increase climate finance towards at least $100 billion per annum goal by 2020, to be scaled up significantly thereafter.
• The BASIC group also encouraged developed countries to progressively and substantially scale up their financial support and finalise a new collective finance goal to inform parties for future action through NDCs (nationally determined contributions).The NDCs are the commitments made by countries to adapt to climate change and reduce emissions.
• In the post-2020 period, the ministers called upon developed countries to provide financial resources to assist developing countries with respect to both mitigation and adaptation in continuation of their existing obligations under the convention.
• The ministers also called upon to clarify about what constitutes climate finance.g., whether investments made by private companies in developed countries in new green technology or improving efficiency in a thermal plant count as climate finance.