The 27th session of the UN conference of parties on climate change mitigation in the Egyptian seaside city of Sharm-el-Sheikh intersects a time when the high table of global diplomacy grapples with the Ukraine war and the energy supply constraints in its wake. Even if it chastens the ambitious tone of  the 26th Cop held at Glasgow last year, it would be a bit stretched to say that around 45,000 participants, including 120 heads of states and governments, are attending the meet under a shadow of the Eurasian conflict. Amid the usual faultlines of the development divide, the meet is set to be more concerned with matters of execution than those of formulation. 

 The moderate expectations can also help in having a realistic look at the roadmap to meet the Paris Agreement objectives. At the Glasgow meet last year, the UN’s Climate Action programme described the challenge of coming up with a blueprint for execution as “the Paris rulebook – the operational details for the practical implementation of the Paris Agreement”. The ongoing meet at Sharm-el-Sheikh seems to have prioritised this over the broad sweep of proposals made in the earlier summits. No wonder that Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister and President of Cop27, has called this conference as the “implementation Cop”.

Besides the stocktaking on execution, the meeting began with a significant inclusion in the agenda, even if it seems a bit tokenistic now: the place for climate compensation in the formal agenda. 

The governing logic of such a demand isn’t complex. It rests on the principle that the developed countries, which cumulatively account for the largest share of pollutants, should compensate the poor countries for suffering the brunt of extreme weather events. Even if that wouldn’t be a tough point to argue on the fairness principle, the current global economic scene doesn’t seem conducive for compensatory negotiations to leave much headway immediately. The developed world is in the grip of economic crises, and most of the rich countries are also staring at the crunch of a slowdown – not the ideal time to commit financial resources to global commons obligations.

As is in all the earlier climate meets, India and China would be watched for what they say and how they respond to what is being said at the meet. In one of the rare spheres of their convergence of interests in otherwise adversarial circumstances, together they constitute a huge bloc for balancing concerns of large economies from the developing world – the latter already an economic powerhouse and the former among the top five global economies – with energy use patterns for climate change mitigation. 

India’s delegation, headed by environment minister Bhupendra Yadav, has moulded its agenda with priorities which reflect a continuity in its core concerns, a focus on specifics of climate finance, and showcasing India’s initiatives in mitigation efforts.

To begin with, the country will continue to seek clarity on climate finance, the vaguely-worded commitments which have impeded the flow of funds for climate action to developing countries like India. India’s environment ministry has emphasised this as one of the key concerns as the environment minister also cautioned against the trend of developed countries “greenwashing’’ financial transfers and passing off loans as climate-related assistance.

India has been arguing that the lack of clarity or even precise quantification of climate finance has meant that developing countries aren’t able to gauge the exact extent of finance flow earmarked for climate action. That’s why India has reiterated the relevance of the maxim “what’s get measured gets done”.

Moreover, India is a key part of a large group of developing countries, which are still nudging the developed countries to accept a new, and probably more precise global climate action finance. It has been termed as the new collective quantified goal on climate finance. As the cost adaptation and other forms of climate action have only expanded, the expectation would be that such goals would be set in trillions. 

But the fate of the proposed NCQG seems hazy in the view of the current economic crisis confronting the developed world as well as the track record of funding past climate finance targets. In 2010, five years before the Cop21 resulted in the Paris Agreement of 2015, the developed countries had agreed to jointly provide $100 billion per year to developing countries by 2020 to aid climate mitigation efforts. But, according to UNFCCC estimates, their contribution through all means couldn’t cross $83.3 billion. 

That, however, hasn’t held India back from suggesting that in the meet’s ad hoc working group, the discussion on NCQG has to engage with both the quantity and quality of the resource flow for mitigation while also clarifying its scope. 

In a statement that highlighted New Delhi’s push to do away with ambiguities seen in the global climate finance proposals, the environment ministry observed, “Issues relating to access and suggestions for improvement in the function of the financial mechanisms are also important. Besides, an improvement in transparency to ensure appropriate oversight of the quantum and direction of flows is imperative.”

Apart from these issues forming the pivot of India’s Cop27 agenda, India is all set to promote its wasteful consumption-countering approach expressed as LiFE – “Lifestyle for Environment”. India has been keen on leveraging soft power to present a solution-driven alternative lifestyle, an approach that strikes against reckless misuse and wastage of natural resources, and trying a shift towards environment-friendly consumption patterns. That’s also the running theme of the India pavilion at Cop27. 

In the past too, India had drawn on its soft power resources to promote lifestyle solutions to the threat of environmental degradation. In the Cop24 held at Poland’s Katowice in 2018, India had themed its pavilion on yoga and it did attract an impressive number of visitors. The current theme builds on the soft power deployment for lifestyle-messaging and solutions India has to offer for combating the scourge of destructive consumption patterns.

In the midst of shifting sands of geopolitics and a dull global economy, the Cop27 would do well to be less rhetorical and more focused on the real task of finding a way of executing even a part of the lofty commitments of the past meets. In being less ambitious, the Sharm-el-Sheikh meet could be more useful, and live up to its billing. That, however, has to be supplemented by not losing sight of some of the key issues that developing countries have brought to the conference with renewed focus. This two-pronged emphasis could stand even the objectives of the Paris Agreement in good stead before the summit wraps up discussions next Friday.