 welcome to New Year's Click. Today we are discussing the COP 24 climate talks. The talks have recently concluded in Poland on Saturday and following that we are going to be discussing more about what happened during those talks and what kind of implications the climate talks will also have. To join us to discuss this with us we have D. Raghunandan, thank you sir. So the talks have recently concluded and there was a concept of you know coming up with a rule book of sorts to implement Paris Agreement and over 200 countries came together for a two week long summit in Poland. So first we would like to break it down for our viewers as to what this rule book was and the background of the entire summit and how far have they been able to come to a conclusion on this? Let me just begin with the rule book itself. The rule book basically is a framing of a set of guidelines which all countries would follow to report on their commitments that they had made for reducing emissions in the Paris Agreement because countries have made commitments on different base years, different methodologies used for how they count reductions in emissions. So the idea of the rule book is that a standard methodology is available for countries to report on which they would be able to do after the Paris Agreement kicks in which is in 2020 and now with this standard rule book they would report on this once every two years. There was considerable disagreement over whether the rule book should be uniform for all countries given the fact that many least developed countries etc may not have the capability to be able to report very rigorously on reductions. So finally the rule book has provided some flexibility for countries which do not have adequate capacity to report the way they could. So this question of commonality and to have the uniform ground becomes very very important and this is a long-standing question like ever since climate talks were going on. So this has been a major bone of contention. So in this conference as well or in this entire context of things is that going to play out more do you think? I don't think so. I think in the past they were in the Kyoto Protocol for example they were far too many ifs and buts and conditions and so on which countries were using to hedge the way they reduced emissions and the way they reported. Now this has reduced those to a minimum but frankly if you ask me I think the rule book while necessary is a secondary part of the urgent task of the Paris Agreement which is actually how far are we away from meeting the target that was set in Paris. And talking about targets so they've discussed in greater detail certain aspects of finance and more on you know the kind of achievements as well so if you could shed some light on that. Well finance has been a bone of contention right from the beginning. Unfortunately they remain so particularly because the developed countries are not prepared to make firm commitments and ex-anti commitments as to what they would contribute. They have essentially said let's see what we can come up with and once we do that we will be able to report on it whereas what the developing countries wanted was for the developed countries to say up front that this is what we will be able to contribute. The other bone of contention remains again what it used to be earlier which is developed countries are not making a distinction between official grant in aid money given by the developed countries and loans given by the countries by agencies located in the developed countries by multilateral agencies by bilateral agencies. Today as things stand roughly 80% of the finances committed are loan finances not grant finances and compared to the hundred billion dollars a year pledges I think we are nowhere more than about 20 billion dollars right now. So financing remains one of the big problem areas. And this has not been able to sort of come to a conclusive stand. Not at all. Yes. The other related question on financing is the vexed issue of what's called loss and damage. Yes. Loss and damage means compensating the least developed countries in particular for damage already caused to them by climate change. The developed countries continue to resist this kind of classification of loss and damage ostensibly because they are worried about the legal implications of liability. If they are held liable for damage caused by climate change tomorrow they could be facing expanded bills for it. That fear has driven the developed countries to take a position saying loss and damage let's talk about that when we have a little more clarity and essentially they kick that can down the road. And talking of controversies as well another thing that dominated conversations was this 1.5 degree report. So what was it all about? Yeah well let me put it like this I think and we've carried this in an earlier interview on this channel that the 1.5 degree what is now emerged as a target and not merely as can we consider raising our ambitions from the earlier two degrees Celsius target to 1.5. I think this 1.5 target is a misleading target. It is framed incorrectly overambitiously and unrealistically in the sense that all the science indicates that we are already well set on a path to see 1.5 degree centigrade rise of so setting a target of 1.5 is really meaningless because as some scientists said earlier 1.5 degrees is already in the rear view mirror it's already gone. The target if 1.5 is to be achieved then in 2020 that's just a year and a bit down the road global emissions should peak should reach a maximum should start declining and should be half of what they are from 2020 by 2030 and they should taper off to net zero by 2050 we are nowhere near those targets and in fact even the two degrees Celsius goal we are far away from it and all the current science including the 1.5 degrees report of the IPCC says that we are looking at somewhere between 3 to 3.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise so the issue really should have been let's focus on the two degrees Celsius target let's assess where we are on that and let's raise ambitions of the Paris agreement commitments now because the Paris agreement commitments are to kick in only in 2020 and we are then expected to do a global stock take of adequacy in 2023 and then maybe think about revising targets the issue should really have been to foreground what can we do today to raise the targets that were set in Paris why should we need to wait for 2020 or 2023 unfortunately the 1.5 degree has become an emotional issue of the small island states and others and frankly if you ask me the island states and many other least developing countries have been led up the garden path by the US and other advanced countries who have deliberately created this mirage in order to put more pressure on China India and other countries who will be then forced to carry more of the responsibility for it so the controversy this time was only because some countries like Russia Saudi Arabia felt that the 1.5 degree report for various reasons that they advanced they didn't agree with and therefore they objected to the use of the phrase this conference welcomes the 1.5 degree Celsius report that was essentially it's a paper tiger controversy really whereas frankly if you would ask me the 1.5 degree report itself is a red herring and should have been addressed in a very different way altogether which of course did not happen and talking of addressing issues and these red herrings that we are continuously getting so where is this going from here because of course they failed to address certain very very crucial questions amidst all the politics that was ongoing in this summit so where do we go from here problem is much of the dynamic of the negotiations has been set yes so every time the cop comes up you're dealing with the target set and the mitigation commitments of different countries that's only one item of the agenda then you've got finance and within finance you have how much of it should go to mitigation how much to adaptation and then you have loss and damage and then you have technology and then you have various little things that fall into place etc my feeling has long been that I think these are all these are issues which arise from the central issue which is what are we doing to contain climate change and ensure that we stay within the two degrees Celsius envelope that we have set for ourselves because if we don't financing loss and damage technology assistance none of this means anything because the worst things get you want more finance you want more technology you want and even what you have already committed you are not doing so I think we are multiplying problems for ourselves chasing false ambitions and chasing unrealistic targets you very ambitious ambitiously set a target of 100 billion dollars you're nowhere near 20 now should we spend time and energy chasing that or should we concentrate our energies on keeping within two degrees Celsius and then working towards letting the other elements fall into place unfortunately we don't seem to be converging towards that we are adding more and more issues as we go along every year so chasing more targets and the the question the real question that is at the end of all of it is that what are we really doing to contain climate change and COP 24 has concluded over 200 countries have come together it was a two week long process but these crucial questions still remain so thank you so much sir for joining us and thank you to our viewers for watching and we leave you with that question thank you