15 Dec 2023 : The Hindu Editorial

Editorial 1 : Keeping it relevant

Context: COP meetings must use climate science to promote justice and equity.

Introduction

• Since 1995, when the first of the United Nations Conference of Parties (COP) was organised, it has undergone a remarkable shift in character. From stuffy, closed-door meetings peopled by bureaucrats and technocrats, they have morphed into a carnival.
   

Growth of Officialdom

• Officialdom has of course grown, with the UN climate secretariat bursting at the seams with reams of subsidiary bodies, ‘working groups’ and intricately convoluted agenda items. But this has been accompanied by the burgeoning of activist groups, indigenous groups, big and small business, consultancies, traders, and a vast media presence.
• It is on the one hand fair to conclude that this is a welcome development and due to the growing awareness of how anthropogenic climate change, amplified by centuries of industrialisation, poses an existential threat to humanity.

Faith in the Climate assessment

• Climate denialists, vociferous and significant in power corridors even until a decade ago, are now relegated to the obscurity of the darknet, along with Flat Earthers, and their ranks filled by parvenus and the pivoting merchants of the fossil fuel era who see opportunity in the messianic espousal of renewable energy.
• There is no country today that will not publicly affirm its faith in the scientific assessment — that greenhouse gas emissions must be contained drastically to cap the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C — and yet it has never inspired any sense of urgency to cut fossil fuel use, the dominant source of GHGs.

Acknowledging the fact, Dubai consensus

• That it has taken nearly three decades for COP to acknowledge this fact, as laid out in the Dubai Consensus, suggests that political expediency and strategic second-guessing has unfortunately weaponised even climate science.
• Thus, countries responsible for most of the human-emitted carbon point to record temperatures and their links to rising emissions when arguing for reining in emissions from developing countries. However, they are loathe to accept this link when developing and island nations demand funds as reparations for devastations already wreaked by climate change.
   

Loss and Damage fund

• The Loss and Damage Fund, which received commitments worth $750 million, and therefore cheered as a COP28-success, has only been approved on the condition that it not be considered as compensation for historical carbon pollution.
• Related to this is the larger concern that COP meetings are deemed as ‘historic’ only when they insert new verb phrases — phase out, phase down, transition — on cutting emissions but are banal when they consider how little money and technology have been channelled for fossil fuel de-addiction.
   

Conclusion

• It is time that future meetings use the science to promote justice and equity and strengthen faith in what is now one of the few working multilateral processes.

Editorial 2 : Principled shift

Context: India must take a more vocal position on Gaza with Israel.

Introduction

• Two months after Israel’s bombardment of Gaza residents in retaliation for the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas began, India joined its voice to the global call to stop the bombing, voting in favour of a resolution at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) along with 152 other nations.
   

Resolution, and India’s shift

• The resolution demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, an observance of international humanitarian law, the unconditional release of all hostages, as well as “ensuring humanitarian access”.
• India’s vote was a shift from its previous vote at the last such UNGA resolution on October 27, when despite the death of 8,000 Gazans, India had decided to abstain from voting for a resolution that called for a ceasefire.
• The government and the MEA explained this to be a matter of principle, as part of India’s “zero-tolerance” approach towards terrorism, as the earlier resolution did not contain an “explicit condemnation” of the October 7 attacks.
• However, while the UNGA resolution passed on December 12 bears no direct mention of the terror attacks, India has voted in favour.
   

Possible reasons for such shift.

• There could be several reasons:
  • Casualty figures have risen relentlessly, with 18,000 dead and the highest such toll of nearly 90 journalists. More than 80% of the entire population is homeless. Even the U.S., Israel’s biggest ally, estimates that nearly half of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions deployed by Israel thus far are “unguided” or indiscriminate missiles.
  • Second, Israeli Defence Forces have gone far beyond their original mandate of eliminating Hamas capacity and freeing the hostages to a large-scale flattening of Gaza and forced occupation of more territory. More than 100 Israeli hostages remain in Hamas custody.
  • Third, global opinion, including Indian public opinion, has moved decidedly from sympathy with Israel, to horror at the unfolding aftermath, and New Delhi could not have been immune to entreaties by Palestine and the Gulf States to take a relook at its vote, even as India stood isolated in South Asia and the Global South for its previous abstention.
     

India’s role

• It may be too early to see India’s UNGA vote as a reversal of its earlier position and a reversion to its original position in the conflict, where it has traditionally called for peace.
• Much will depend on the role India chooses for itself in ensuring the ceasefire is affected and holds, given that Israel has already rejected the UNGA resolution.
   

Conclusion

• Having proven its credentials as a friend to Israel following the terror attacks, as well as the odium of enabling the civilian deaths, the Modi government must be more vocal in helping the Netanyahu government out of the strategic cul de sac it has bombarded its way into, one which could cause regional instability and insecurity for decades.

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