01 Nov 2023 : The Hindu Editorial

Editorial 1 : Stocktaking climate finance — a case of circles in red ink

Context:

• Climate finance has a crucial role in retaining the trust of the developing countries in future climate change negotiations. The issues relating to climate finance are likely to be prominent in the United Nations Climate Change Conference or UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP 28) meeting (2023), in Dubai (UAE).

Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report findings:

• It comes in the context of the Synthesis Report providing the main scientific input to the global stocktake at COP. The report says that the current temperature increase at 1.1° Celsius is responsible for frequent hazardous weather.
• Thus, the developed countries and climate vulnerable countries are likely to demand a ramping up of mitigation action by the developing countries — which is likely to be countered with the demand that the developed countries have not been able to meet the mark of a mobilisation of $100 billion per year in climate finance by 2020 as committed at the Copenhagen summit of UNFCCC.
• The sum is inadequate in terms of the challenges faced by the developing countries in switching over to a low carbon development pathway and climate resilient development. Providing finance to developing countries is based on the principle of the Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC).

Estimating adequate climate finance

• The developed countries are required in mandatory terms to provide financial resources to developing country parties. Under Article 9 of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, it is also mandatory for the developed countries to provide in their Biennial Update Reports (BUR), information relating to the financial resources which they have provided. At the Copenhagen Change Conference in 2009, the developed countries made the commitment to mobilise $100 billion per year by 2020.
• Further, the developed countries are required, in accordance with the decision accompanying the atmosphere of Paris Agreement, to collectively mobilise $100 billion through 2025, before a new collective quantified goal (NCQG) ‘from a floor of $100 billion per year is to be set at the end of 2024’.
• At the 26th UNFCCC in Glasgow in 2021, the developed countries noted, with deep regret, of being able to mobilise only a total of $79.6 billion.
• The Paris Agreement is based on the self determined efforts of all the parties inscribed in the nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which contain the mitigation efforts to be made by a party for the next 5 years.
• Entire NDCs put together project a picture of overshooting the 1.5° C temperature goal. Going by the needs of countries in the Global South expressed in their NDCs, the amount quantified for the first time touches close to $6 trillion until 2030.
• India’s 3rd BUR says that its financial needs derived from its NDCs for adaptation and mitigation purposes for 2015­-30 are $206 billion and $834 billion, respectively.

Unclear burden sharing formula

• The developed countries are mandatorily required to provide financial resources to developing country parties, but there is no agreed approach among developed countries to share the burden of this goal. One analysis suggests that the United States provided just 5% of its fair share in 2020.
• Without any mandatory formula for collecting money, it is difficult to predict how the said money or the NCQG for climate finance will be mobilised. Neither the UNFCCC nor the Paris Agreement mention the criterion for mobilisation. Instead, the mobilisation is done with the help of a replenishment process.
• Global Environment Facility (GEF), a UNFCCC-­designated funding agency providing grant and concessional loan to developing countries, is replenished every four years.
• A similar approach has been borrowed into the Green Climate Fund (GCF) by the developed countries to mobilise part of the $100 bn finance for developing country parties to switch over to low emissions and climate resilient development path. GCF had its second replenishment recently in 2023, in which only 25 countries out of 37 developed countries met in Bonn, pledging to contribute $9.3 billion.

Replicate this action

• Strong political will, perceived urgency and enlightened self interest of the elite Global North were writ large in the case of a perceived collapse of global public good (global financial stability) in 2009­-10 when the G­20 governments quickly responded to the global financial crisis, getting $1.1 trillion in a few weeks to support the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and multilateral development banks to save the global financial system.
• Unfortunately, these factors are missing when it comes to the necessary climate finance transfers from developed to developing countries to safeguard another global common — the atmosphere.

Editorial 2 : Welcome assertion

Context:

• Supreme Court (SC) of India has fixed a deadline for the Maharashtra Assembly Speaker to adjudicate on petitions seeking the disqualification of members who had broken away from the leadership of the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

Disqualification of legislators

• Constitutional provisions consist of Articles 102 & 191: The basic disqualification criteria for an MP are outlined in Article 102 of the Constitution, while those for an MLA are outlined in Article 191.
• Grounds for disqualification under the Constitution include conditions like holding a profit-making position in the Government of India or a state government, Being of unsound mind, being an unpaid insolvent, not being an Indian citizen, or acquiring citizenship of another country. 
• Article 102 also empowers the Parliament to enact legislation governing the conditions of disqualification. 

Anti-defection law (ADL) and 10th schedule:

Parliament added 10th schedule to the Constitution via the 52nd Amendment Act, 1985. Grounds of Disqualification under the law are:

1. If an elected member voluntarily gives up his membership of a political party.
2. If s/he votes or abstains from voting in such House contrary to any direction issued by his political party or anyone authorized to do so, without obtaining prior permission.
3. If any independently elected member joins any political party.
4. If any nominated member joins any political party after the expiry of 6 months.

Role of Speaker:

• Pressing officers of the legislature are empowered to take the final decision in matters of disqualification of legislators under 10th schedule, although after Kihoto Hollohan case (1992), their decision in the matter is now subject to judicial review (eg, on grounds of mala fide/bad intent etc).
• There is no clarity in the law about the timeframe for the action of the House Chairperson or Speaker in the anti-defection cases. In the Maharashtra assembly case, it has been pending since July 2022.
• Long experience shows that Speakers tend to treat disqualification issues with great alacrity or supine indifference, depending on their political affiliations. Despite being reminded from time to time of their duty to remain neutral and demonstrate a sense of urgency in dealing with questions arising out of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, presiding officers appear to place political loyalties above their constitutional duty.

Role of the judiciary:

• It is quite fitting, therefore, that the apex court has asked Speaker Rahul Narwekar to decide the disqualification petitions against Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s camp by December 31 and those concerning the NCP’s breakaway group headed by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar by January 31, 2024.
• The directions are a natural follow­up to the outcome of a Constitution Bench decision on May 11, 2023, in which the Speaker was asked to decide the disqualification issue “within a reasonable period”.
• None can dispute that the Speaker has had enough time to decide the matter, even though a few procedural aspects and the clubbing of petitions may account for some delay. In an earlier order in September, the Court had observed that it expected the Speaker to show deference to its directions, especially when he is acting as a tribunal under the Tenth Schedule.
• Even without judicial orders, the issue of whether a member has incurred disqualification is not a matter which can be dealt with in a leisurely or partisan manner. Recent political history is rife with instances of ruling parties casually recruiting members of the Opposition in several States without any fear of disqualification, as they know that friendly Speakers will not disqualify them.

Way forward:

• So long as the Speaker is vested with the authority to adjudicate disqualification issues, it will be difficult to free matters of defection from the thicket of politics.
• India may examine following the UK model regarding the position of the Speaker, whereby a legislator elected as Speaker to the House resigns from his/her political party membership in order to remain neutral in his/her functions.