Since India delayed an announcement on its future carbon emissions cuts at the end of August, there has been a lot of talk about a possible shift in climate change policy by New Delhi.
Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the Left Wing Communist Party of India (Marxist) said Narendra Modi is reneging on the “red lines” drawn by previous governments in U.N. climate change talks.
These red lines, according to Yechury, require New Delhi to refrain from announcing unilateral commitments or accepting any binding emissions cuts, and insisting on the developed world fulfilling its pledges to transfer climate finance and low-carbon technology to developing countries like India without intellectual property rights payments.
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Resource consumption has grown exponentially over the past: between 1970 and 2010, the quantity of extracted materials has tripled. Not only the overall amount of resources extracted and consumed has risen rapidly, but also the diversity of resources has grown. While half a century ago, only a few materials such as wood, brick, iron, copper, and plastics were in high demand worldwide, today products are more complex and require a wide range of materials.
Times of war can result in rapid environmental degradation as people struggle to survive and environmental management systems break down resulting in damage to critical ecosystems. For over six decades, armed conflicts have occurred in more than two-thirds of the world’s biodiversity hotspots thus posing critical threats to conservation efforts. [...]
More than 4,700 delegates, including environment ministers, scientists, academics, business leaders and civil society representatives, met in Nairobi for the UN Environment Assembly, the world’s top environmental body whose decisions will set the global agenda, notably ahead of the UN Climate Action Summit in September.
Mid february, the EU's foreign affairs ministers welcomed the Commission’s strategic long-term vision for a climate neutral Europe. Ministers also called for urgent and decisive action to strengthen the global response on climate change and restated the EU’s determination to lead the way on accelerated climate action on all fronts.