New Delhi, February 26: Global conferences focus public attention on pressing challenges with the hope that countries will be motivated to collectively address them. The last climate COP was held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt while the biodiversity COP was in Montreal, Canada. Yet, the response to the two COPs differed in important ways. And just ahead of COP28 and after a gap of two years the World Sustainable Development Summit (WSDS) , took place, focusing on climate change and biodiversity together.
In fact, both climate change and biodiversity reflect the “commons” issue. Climate change is a problem of overuse of a global common pool resource, the atmosphere, which serves as a sink for greenhouse gases. A common pool resource can be used by anybody. As its use increases, it gets degraded. Individual actors are reluctant to unilaterally reduce resource use because they fear that others will not do so, and their sacrifice will be in vain.
Observing that the Loss and Damage Agreement at Sharm el- Sheikh provided hope to many low-income countries bearing the brunt of climate change, Naseer Ahamed, Minister of Environment, Sri Lanka, highlighted that it also left a lot of questions unanswered. “The question now is how to populate the fund and how to disburse it. As one of the most vulnerable countries in the frontline of climate crisis facing large-scale biodiversity loss, Sri Lanka has recognised the need for a greater collective voice for urgent, speedy and equitable execution of the loss and damage fund,” said Mr Ahamed.
The Sri Lankan minister mooted the need to form a Climate Justice Forum to amplify the interests of like-minded climate vulnerable developing countries. Considering the magnitude of opportunities lost by not investing in nature, he also suggested “the establishment a first-of-its-kind international development bank” and proposed it be called the “Biosphere Reserve Bank”.
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Justifying Biosphere Reserve Bank as a planetary imperative, Minister Naseer said, “without scaling up climate finance on a Biblical scale, with what is famously known in history as the Dunkirk Spirit, we will only win the battle, but lose the war.”
Positioning Biosphere Reserve Bank as the centerpiece of a revitalized and reengineered Climate Justice Forum, the minister declared in front of a distinguished panel of speakers that “the overarching goal of COP28 Presidency should be to universalize biosphere consciousness and ecological citizenship as the rocket fuel for radical and accelerated overhaul and transformation of global economy and financial architecture. Global cumulative climate debt, with no sign of abating, is a ticking time bomb.”
Rajani Ranjan Rashmi, Distinguished Fellow and Program Director, Earth Science and Climate Change at The Energy & Resources Institute (TERI), who chaired this high-octane session on climate justice, hailed the idea of a global Biosphere Reserve Bank as “transformational”. She also highlighted the need to evolve a framework for the upcoming COP28 where the focus is on GGA, climate finance and Global Stocktake.
However, Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), stated: “We are heading for warming of 2.5oC or more, with disastrous consequences”, and underscored the need for countries to align closely with their Paris commitments. He asserted the need to deliver a truly transformative Global Stocktake. “The Stocktake is the focal point of our work this year, the centrepiece of COP28, and the first time the world comes together to determine whether nations are meeting the climate goals agreed in Paris. The success of COP28 depends on the success of the Global Stocktake, or more specifically, the response to the Stocktake,” he added.
In his ministerial remark, Minister Naseer Ahamed unveiled the idea. Jennifer Morgan, State Secretary and Special Envoy for International Climate Action, Federal Foreign Office, Germany, joined the session virtually along with other distinguished speakers.
In the sideline of WSDS, Srilanka Minister Ahamed also met his Indian counterpart Bhupender Yadav and discussed matters related to arresting land degradation and combating climate change.
Soon after bilateral meeting, Union minister of Environment Bhupender Yadav tweeted, “Met with Sri Lankan Environment Minister Mr @naseerahamedcm in Delhi today. We discussed matters related to arresting land degradation and combating climate change with particular focus on aspects related to Loss and Damage and Technology Transfer.”
Ahamed was in India representing Sri Lanka at the “World Sustainable Development Summit (WSDS)” in New Delhi India from February 22nd to 24th.
-Dr. M Shahid Siddiqui (PhD), Follow via Twitter @shahidsiddiqui
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