 The 28th Conference of Parties or COP28 has begun in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and climate change is of course on the agenda, the key agenda point of course. Now over the next two weeks or so you are going to be hearing a lot of terms like mitigation, terms like the carbon budget, terms like the loss and damage fund adaptation and some of these terms might leave you a bit puzzled about whether we are really making any progress towards dealing with the very pressing issue of climate change. We know that the impacts of climate change are right here, right now, millions of people suffering those kinds of impacts, whether we are talking about weather events, whether we are talking about longer structural issues, we are talking about food. In so many ways, people across the globe are suffering from the impact of climate change right now and the question really before all of us is that are we taking any concrete steps, are the steps we are taking good enough to address the problem of climate change to reverse the kind of damage that is already being caused to protect ourselves, the damage that is definitely coming in the next few years. We have with us D. Raghunandan of the Delhi Science Forum who has been following many of these summits for many years now, who has been following these issues so much. Raghunandan, thank you so much for joining us. Hello, thank you for having me. Raghunandan, before we get into some of the individual questions and topics that you know are going to be the subject of discussion, I just wanted to ask a general question for the benefit of our audience here really. What happens at these COP summits and specifically COP 28? Why is it significant? To answer your first question, what happens at these summits is that there is a broad agenda fixed for the particular summit in question which has been fixed partly at the previous COP and partly during the intersectional discussions and negotiations and there is usually one meeting between two COPs where some of the agenda finalization takes place. So that is number one and this of course has to be agreed by all the countries, the parties. So it's a slightly long process and negotiations are involved. A lot of non-governmental organizations are also consulted in one way or the other. In formulating the agenda and what happens to those and then agenda documents are prepared for each of these things by committee set up for that purpose. So two broad things happen. One is that there are technical discussions on specific agenda items. Like you mentioned, loss and damage or adaptation or now an item has been introduced on food security and agriculture. So you have special sessions on that which are in parallel and then you have plenary sessions where everybody sits together and adopts resolutions and some of these are key to each COP, the major resolutions and the final declaration that comes out of the COP. So these are two things that happen and apart from which there are a large number of side events which are organized by countries, by non-governmental organizations, by industry participants etc. So there is a general jamboree and a festival atmosphere. At the same time, there are business-like sessions taking place either in groups or at the plenary level. Next question that you asked was what is key about this COP? What is specific about this COP is under the Paris Agreement, it had been decided that there would be a what is called a global stock take. Meaning you have taken certain decisions as to how much emissions will be reduced, how much money will come for adaptation etc. These were decisions taken under the Paris Agreement and it was decided that starting from 2020 that is five years after the Paris Agreement, there would be a process initiated to take stock of all these decisions, what has happened, how much has happened, how much has not happened etc. That process has been going on from 2020 till 2023 till last month and last month a set of documents has been released which is the summary of the technical dialogues that have taken place as part of the global stock take and then this has gone to the country parties who have then sat together and prepared a synthesis report. So there are two documents being placed, one is the report of the technical dialogue which reflects the opinions of countries, non-country parties, industry, NGOs etc. and then there is a synthesis report. These have been placed before this COP and at this COP you are expected to take stock of what has happened and what has happened covers mitigation that is emission reductions, adaptation, funding and technology support etc. You take stock of this based on that you arrive at some modalities, how to correct, how to modify, how to advance and this process will take another year until in 2025, middle of 2025 all countries are expected to submit revised NDCs, nationally developed contributions, what they would do to keep emissions down etc. etc. By middle of 2025 they are expected to submit these updated NDCs which will get ratified and finalized at the end of 2025 that is in COP 30. That process has to start now this year at COP 28. So by the end of this we expect at least an outline what has the COP understood from this global stock take, what kind of revision does it expect to see, what kind of guidance does it give to the country parties and how are they proposed to work out a mechanism to develop these updated NDCs prior to COP 30. This is the main thing that is to be expected from this COP that's this global stock take has not taken place before and this is the first time it's taking place and therefore it's a very major development. But from the details that have emerged out of the global stock take report, how has our progress been, what grade do we get? I put it like this, if you look at the synthesis report which is a political document because it's been agreed by all countries so it's not purely the technical aspects. The secretariat of the UN framework convention is also is the party who has actually drafted the document and there is a certain shall we say vested interest on the part of everybody. The UN bureaucracy, the UN system, countries to say we've been engaged in these negotiations for the past 20 odd years and we've done a good job. That is understandable because they've spent a lot of time and money. So part of the report is to say, yes we have not done that well but hey we haven't done too badly in the sense that we have slowed down the growth of emissions. It was much higher before we started this process we would have said temperatures would reach 3.5 or 4 degrees higher than the pre-industrial era. Now we are down to 2.5 to 3 so there's the improvement. This is what in articles I have written including a news click I have described as the glass quarter full approach saying that yeah three quarters of the job is still left way but look we've achieved a quarter of what we've set out to do but the three quarters empty part of it is that we are way behind the targets. The target was to achieve limiting the temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius or preferably as close to 1.5 degrees as possible. Today global emissions are about 57 giga tons or billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and what the global stock take has shown is that in 2030 which is where all our NDCs are targeted at going by present NDCs then we are way below where we should be at 2030 and we are below by how much if you want to reach 2 degrees Celsius we are below by about 25 percent that is we should be 25 percent lower than where the prediction is that we will be and if you want to reach 1.5 we are 42 percent lower than where we want to be to put that in perspective between last year and this year total global emissions have actually gone up by one and a half to two percent so we are still in an upward trajectory while we should be on a downward trajectory and a sharply downward trajectory in order to reach the goal in 2030 where we are way behind where we should be that is the stock reality which COP 28 has to face up to and if it does face up to the stock reality it will mean starting very steep reductions even now and certainly in the next NDCs which are to be tabled at COP 30 there should be an extremely sharp decline in order to reach the target to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius in fact activists have said that this is the COP where 1.5 degrees might be very secretly buried at this point by the way at which things are going you see if there was actually several COPs ago a group of indians scientists and NGOs who issued a summit where a statement when this 1.5 degree which was earlier just said as an aspirational goal seemed to emerge as a target this group of Indian scientists and NGOs put out a statement saying this is unrealistic and 1.5 Celsius is already in the rear view mirror it's gone so the assessments tell us that this year we have already reached 1.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and if that is the case then there is no way we can prevent temperature rise from stopping at 1.5 or below that because there is what is called a temperature lack the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases which we have put into the atmosphere whatever you do even if you switch off all the factories in and cars in the world today temperature will keep rising because of the carbon dioxide which is already accumulated in the atmosphere so 1.5 is certain to be crossed therefore what our target should be is to try and keep temperature rise to as much below 2 degrees as possible and taking this into account that we may cross 1.5 but if we take early action we can make sure that although it goes above 1.5 for a few years it is can then be checked and maybe reduced later but that's called an overshoot so there is going to be an overshoot beyond 1.5 it remains to be seen whether we are able to check that overshoot and bring it back down again but 1.5 as I said is a slightly illusory target let's be realistic and make sure of 2 degrees because right now if current indices are followed we are looking at temperature rise of between 2.5 and 2.9 Celsius close to 3 and as you said in your introduction even at 1.4 look at the kind of extreme weather events we are already experiencing floods, droughts, forest fires, heat waves and various IPCC reports are telling us that some of these impacts sea level rise, glacier melts and melting of the polar ice caps have already become almost irreversible you can't now put the ice back into the poles and they have gone beyond what are called adaptive limits that is sea level rise has become so high that in many places like in the islands you can't adjust anymore they'll just drown out your island it's gone beyond capacity to adapt to those changes. Now of course this brings us to the key debate which is of course which is a part of every COP which is a part of every climate discussion which is really the question of differentiated responsibilities the question of what the global north especially owes at this point I believe there have been new reports which even talk a bit more about the impact of colonialism and all that but specifically at this point do you see countries of the global north being able to sort of is there a greater recognition of this issue than before or you know has it continued to be the same especially when it comes to issues like financing? You see my own understanding is it's not as if the global north does not know what is happening the reports from the scientific community from IPCC even from United Nations agencies from agencies like the International Energy Agency the UN Environment Protection Agency UNEP which publishes a global emissions gap report the latest of which has already been released before they're all saying the same thing so we know the problem and we also know what needs to be done to tackle the problem. Question is are we willing to do it and the global north has been highly reluctant to put it mildly to actually do what is necessary even the NDCs the pledges that were made in the Paris Agreement the deepest cuts were promised by the European Union which have long been considered the green champions of the world but even the EU targets were roughly 55 to 60 percent cut below 1990 levels which is already 20 to 25 percent cut less than what the EU had been promising a few years before that so already they've come down the US of course is shameless they have made a commitment of reduction based on 2050 which doesn't tell you much about what's happening before that and their baseline year is to reduce emissions below 2005 levels not 1990 and between 1990 and 2005 US emissions had already gone up by 17 percent so whatever commitment they've made now you should subtract 78 percent from that you're left with nothing like about 25 to 30 percent cut which they have promised that was already there in the Paris NDCs since then citing various issues the Ukraine war economic slowdown in Europe and in the US partly all the advanced capitalist countries have resumed power generation using coal they have increased the use of natural gas and they are giving it a spin by calling natural gas a transitional fuel between fossil fuels and renewables whereas natural gas is just another fossil fuel of course it's not as dirty as coal but that doesn't mean that it's a great alternative so they are pushing the use of natural gas they are increasing the use of coal because of economic considerations and the presidency of the COP Dr. Aljaber of the UAE is the president of the COP he is also the CEO of the Abu Dhabi national oil company which is one of the largest oil companies in the world so the president of COP has now been pushing for and you'll hear this term repeated during the COP unabated oil meaning that if you extract oil but you do some carbon capture and sequestration that is okay so it's like the natural gas alibi you're giving an alibi to oil extraction along with carbon capture it's not clear how much carbon will be captured whether it will be 20 percent 80 percent whether you'll have the money to do it whether Nigeria will have the money to do it whether other oil producing companies will have the money to do it but this unabated oil will start creeping in now you already had natural gas being given an alibi now you're getting this and he's also pushing for what is called blue hydrogen which is hydrogen extracted from these processes of oil processing but which again will require carbon capture in order to use it so various oil fossil fuel alternatives are going to be put forward at this COP also all of which means that the chances of reducing emissions are reduced considerably compared to where we were before so the big doubt at this COP is going to be what is the terminology going to emerge as guidelines for the new NDC if you're going to get all these alibis coming in then the new NDCs in COP 30 are not going to amount to much and they certainly will not be equivalent to this now the big problem and maybe this is your next question and we can deal with it is how does the world tackle this reluctance on the part of the developed countries because if they don't reduce there's not much anybody else can do right absolutely yeah that exactly that is I think Raghu my final question for today's interview that this boils down to what you said earlier which is that it's really a political question at so many levels and for instance especially with the rise of certain right-wing regimes in the global north and even in some countries in the global south you see a complete reluctance to tackle climate change even you have hurt wielders for instance who is said the new you know whose party emerges a leading one in the Netherlands who's a complete denier it seems like we know Donald Trump went out of the Paris Agreement has a good chance of winning next year so how do you sort of also see this either reluctance or in certain cases absolute denial of the issue in many of these countries yeah so there are two or three aspects to this one is we have seen that at the COP countries have got together particularly the least developed countries the Africa group the small island states they have got together for years have been battling this question of compensation from the developed countries for damage and losses already incurred by these least developed etc countries to constitute a separate fund for loss and damage that was finally agreed at COP 27 and just yesterday at COP 28 it was given a formal stamp of approval and the fund has been launched the problem however is there is a fund which the developed countries are supposed to give to assist developing countries to adopt low carbon development techniques and to adapt to changes in climate now you've got an additional fund called loss and damage the problem is all this money is has to come from the same parties right from the US from Europe from and on all these funds loss and damage is the latest the global north the developed countries have been fudging right from the outside they pledged a hundred billion dollars per year by 2020 they are nowhere near that currently numbers are being projected to say that last year they reached 81.2 billion dollars which is a completely misleading number the number is actually closer to about 20 billion because in this 81 billion which they are counting they are also counting multilateral assistance they are also counting development aid which is normally given by the developed countries to the developing all those they are lumping together and showing under this hundred billion dollars fund on top of this you are asking for additional loss and damage so what is actually going to happen is that they will be and we'll see this at this comp they will be continued tussles between the developing countries and the developed countries where is this money going to come from you keep this money separate what is the mechanism and so on my big worry is that with so much effort being put into these issues of financing and loss and damage as well as a lot of political capital being invested in this will there be sufficient energy and capital left to deal with these issues of reducing emissions that's going to be a big challenge unless the least developed countries the developing countries can strategically balance out how much effort they put into the financing issue and how much effort they put in so a lot is going to depend on how much effort is going to be put in and whether the developed countries are able to use the financing issue to distract away from the emissions issue it suits them if you go on discussing financing and if you don't push on emissions because money is cheap they will promise you the moon and give you a few pieces of rock and leave you dangling there while the emissions continue as before based on the fact that as you said in your introduction the impacts that are being felt are actually being felt as much by the global north as the global south but the north has the ability to partially withstand that we are able to spend money to counter the impacts they are able to contain it etc knowing that the developing countries in the global south will not be able to so that's what the global north is betting on that yes climate change is going to get worse we'll tackle that problem slowly but we will prioritize looking after our own internal economic interests and domination of the world economy by protecting our carbon budget to make sure that we retain our dominant position because we can withstand climate impacts more than the others can however this is a faustian bargain because the time will come 10 years from now when impacts will be so great including in the higher altitudes higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere that europe and the united states and north america will be so severely affected that they will have to come around to doing this the issue is by then it might be too late thank you so much for that unfortunately a very bleak picture but this is a moment for realism more than anything else as opposed to misplaced optimism sometimes so very essential that we have these discussions thank you so much we'll come back to you maybe around the same time next week for a sum up of what has happened in the next week's discussions which are definitely going to be very crucial thank you thank you so much thank you