India must adopt better monitoring systems and set more ambitious climate targets to address global extreme temperatures, independent expert group Climate Crisis Advisory Group said on Monday.
In its report, “Solving the climate conundrum: Piecing together a global approach to keeping 1.5 alive”, the group noted that the global climate target to tackle warming by 2100 was to keep temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius, which was an “absolute planetary boundary, not an arbitrary limit”.
The Paris Climate Agreement, an international treaty on climate change, had set 1.5 degrees Celsius as the threshold to limit global average temperatures. Breaching this would unleash far more severe climate change effects on people, wildlife and ecosystems.
The report released on Monday dealt with the climate challenges faced by India, Ghana, the United States and Brazil.
India’s emissions per capita were significantly lower than those of other developed economies, it said, adding that the country faced a “complex balancing act” to transition away from fossil fuels without sacrificing energy security.
The researchers urged India to end fossil fuel subsidies and licences, accelerate the transition to renewable energy sources and ensure the protection of biodiversity and Indigenous communities to reverse its current climate trajectory.
Additionally, the report said that wealthy countries such as the United States should acknowledge their moral debt, compensate for environmental damages in India and share technology to combat the crisis.
“In balancing the world’s fastest growing major economy with the imperatives of energy security and climate ambitions, India will need significantly greater investments, technology partnerships and resilient supply chains,” Arunabha Ghosh, chief executive officer of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, said in a press release about the report.
The report was released a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that India was not responsible for global environmental degradation, The Indian Express reported.
“India represents about 17% of the world’s population, yet our carbon emissions account for less than four percent,” Modi said in New York.
Although the prime minister did not mention the source of the data, this figure was also seen in a 2023 Union government press release that said India’s historical cumulative emissions amounted to less than 4% of the global emissions between 1850 and 2019.
This release too did not cite a source. A similar number was mentioned in a 2023 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
However, a study released in December 2023 by the Global Carbon Project found that India contributed 8% of the world’s emissions in 2022. This figure is projected to increase.
In 2023, India also surpassed the European Union to become the third-highest carbon polluter in the world, succeeded only by the United States and China.
India’s climate goals were also ranked as insufficient to limit global temperature increases by the Climate Action Tracker, which comprises two independent organisations that evaluate governments’ progress on climate goals.
“If all countries were to follow India’s approach, warming would reach over 2°C and up to 3°C,” it said.
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