Context:
India urged the G20 nations to pledge for reductions by 2030 at the 2021 G20 climate meet.
Relevance:
GS-II: International Relations (Important International Groupings, Foreign Policies, Agreements and treaties affecting India’s Interests), GS-III: Environment and Ecology (Environmental Pollution and Degradation, Conservation of Environment and Ecology)
Dimensions of the Article:
- About G20
- Structure and functioning of G20
- Highlights of the recent G20 climate meet
- Carbon Neutrality
About G20
- The G20 is an informal group of 19 countries and the European Union, with representatives of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
- The G20 membership comprises a mix of the world’s largest advanced and emerging economies, representing about two-thirds of the world’s population, 85% of global gross domestic product, 80% of global investment and over 75% of global trade.
- The members of the G20 are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union.
- Spain as a permanent, non-member invitee, also attends leader summits.
Structure and functioning of G20
- The G20 Presidency rotates annually according to a system that ensures a regional balance over time.
- For the selection of presidency, the 19 countries are divided into 5 groups, each having no more than 4 countries. The presidency rotates between each group.
- Every year the G20 selects a country from another group to be president.
- India is in Group 2 which also has Russia, South Africa and Turkey.
- The G20 does not have a permanent secretariat or Headquarters.
- The work of G20 is divided into two tracks:
- The Finance track comprises all meetings with G20 finance ministers and central bank governors and their deputies. Meeting several times throughout the year they focus on monetary and fiscal issues, financial regulations, etc.
- The Sherpa track focuses on broader issues such as political engagement, anti-corruption, development, energy, etc.
Highlights of the recent G20 climate meet
- India, at the conclusion of the G20 climate meet, said that pledges by some countries to achieve Net Zero GHG emissions or ‘carbon neutrality’ by mid-century were inadequate, when considering the rights of developing countries to economic growth.
- India urged G20 countries to commit to bringing down per capita emissions to Global average by 2030.
- India’s position as the third largest greenhouse gas emitter but also with among the lowest per capita emissions means that it has always resisted a hard deadline — some countries have set their target years as 2050 or 2060 — to commit to a net-zero future.
- Countries periodically submit the National Determined Contributions (NDC) that outline their plans towards capping emission.
- As per India’s NDC, India has to:
- Increase cumulative electricity generation installed capacity from non-fossil sources of energy to 40% by 2030, which currently stands at around 38%
- Lower emissions intensity of its GDP by 33-35% compared to 2005 levels by 2030
- Create additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tons through additional forest and tree cover.
Click Here to read about carbon neutrality
-Source: The Hindu
