As the Glasgow climate change conference heads for closure the Group of 22 Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) including India have come out strongly against the “carbon colonisation” of the developed countries.
These countries have made a proposal to the COP26 Presidency not to adopt a “mitigation-centric” approach by keeping the 1.5 degrees Centigrade target for global warming “as a collective responsibility “ of all nations. Since the developed countries are mainly responsible for global warming they must also bear a greater share of the burden for reducing it.
In a press conference on Thursday, LMDCs pointed out that the draft text being proposed at the Glasgow meet is reinventing the terms of the Paris Agreement.
“The Paris Agreement has a delicate balance, which we cannot rewrite. If we go ahead with the proposal of net zero by 2050 for all countries, the developing world will be trapped. We do not have the technological, financial means to achieve such targets. This narrative will allow the developed world to control the world with carbon colonialism. Developing countries will be ethically, financially condemned for not complying," said Diego Pacheco, lead negotiator of Bolivia on behalf of LMDC, said at a press conference.
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The proposal highlights the fact that the developed countries occupied 60% of the carbon space with only 18% of the world population and the historical responsibility of developed countries in causing the climate crisis could not be ignored.
These rich countries have overused their domestic carbon space and must leave the remaining atmospheric space for developing countries.
It also states that developed countries should achieve full decarbonization with a real and immediate reduction of emissions within this decade.
India, on behalf of the BASIC group of nations, comprising Brazil, South Africa, India, and China, also said that balance was lacking in the draft texts, and the mitigation section offered a highly “prescriptive" approach due to proposals such as revising the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) by 2022, annual ministerial roundtables on mitigation and updating long-term strategies but that the same approach was not reflected in finance, a member of the Indian delegation said.
