India at COP29: We cannot accept any attempts to deflect the focus from finance

BAKU: Baku: Making intervention during discussion on the latest draft texts at COP29, India on Thursday made it clear that the goal for mobilisation of climate finance “needs to be $1.3 trillion with $600 billion of this coming through grants and grants equivalent resources”. It said the country cannot accept any attempts to deflect the focus from finance.
Articulating India’s stand, the country’s environment secretary Leena Nandan said, “The New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) is the financial support from developed to developing countries on grant and concessional terms for meeting our ambitious nationally determined contributions (NDCs)…Action will get severely impacted in the absence of adequate means of implementation.
The document therefore needs to be specific on the structure, quantum, quality, timeframe, access, transparency, and review.”
Referring to the text on the post-2025 finance goal, she emphasised that the expansion of the contributor base, reflection of conditional elements such as macroeconomic and fiscal measures, suggestion for carbon pricing, focus on private sector actors for scaling up resource flows as investments are contrary to the mandate for the goal.
“NCQG is not an investment goal…
We must accept that climate actions by developing countries will have to be country driven, in line with their circumstances and in the manner best suited to country priorities,” said Nandan
She also underlined that the COP29 started with focus on enablement through NCQG, but its focus is now shifting to mitigation.
“We cannot accept any attempts to deflect the focus again from finance to repeated emphasis on mitigation. All countries have submitted their NDCs and will be submitting the next round of NDCs being informed by the various decisions we have taken together in the past as well as on the basis of our national circumstances and in the context of sustainable development goals and poverty eradication,” said Nandan.
“What we decide here on climate finance will certainly influence what we submit next year. The attempt by some parties (countries) to further talk about mitigation is primarily a shift in focus from their own responsibilities of providing finance,” she said.
The remark was in clear reference to the rich nations’ attempt to deflect attention from finance goal to mitigation by bringing in the issue of inadequacy of the developing countries’ NDCs in sync with the Paris Agreement temperature targets.
“We feel disappointed by the fact that we continue to shift focus when the time has come to ensure that the mitigation actions are fully supported through provisions of adequate finances as per ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ (CBDR-RC) and equity considerations,” said the secretary.
“This is the time for balance. Balance in the climate discourse. If not so ensured, we may have continuous talk of mitigation that has no meaning, unless supported by enablement that is needed to make climate actions happen on the ground,” she said in her intervention during the single setting session on all the texts, released on Thursday.