India pushes for dialogue on climate finance, adaptation at Bonn climate talks

Account subscription benefits alongside Premium Stories, Editorials, Opinions and more. Unlock these with Subscription

The View From India Looking at World Affairs from the Indian perspective.

First Day First Show News and reviews from the world of cinema and streaming.

Today's Cache Your download of the top 5 technology stories of the day.

Data Point Decoding the headlines with facts, figures, and numbers

Health Matters Ramya Kannan writes to you on getting to good health, and staying there

The Hindu On Books Books of the week, reviews, excerpts, new titles and features.

A general view shows the plenary hall during an international replenishment conference for the United Nations Green Climate Fund in Bonn, Germany. File | Photo Credit: Reuters

India has called for the shrinking pool of climate finance and a widening adaptation finance gap to be tackled head-on at the United Nations climate negotiations-linked talks under way in Bonn, Germany. It has urged that a Paris Agreement provision, which obliges developed countries to provide funds to developing nations, be given dedicated agenda space to enable substantive progress.

The intervention came in India’s statement to the 64th session of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies (SB64), delivered by Harkeerat Randhawa of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). India associated itself with the positions taken on behalf of the Group of 77 and China (G-77), the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) and the BASIC bloc (Brazil, South Africa, India, China).

The Bonn meeting runs from June 8 to 18 and is the mid-year session of the two subsidiary bodies — on implementation (SBI) and on scientific and technological advice (SBSTA) — that prepare draft decisions for the annual Conference of the Parties. It is the first multilateral climate conference since COP30, held in Belém, Brazil, last November, and is tasked with turning those outcomes into negotiable text ahead of CoP31. That summit will be hosted in Antalya, Turkey in November, which holds the formal presidency and Australia presiding over the negotiations.

India pressed for the dialogue on unilateral trade measures — a reference to carbon border levies such as the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) — to address their adverse effects on developing countries’ climate action, anchored in Article 3.5 of the Convention. It cautioned that the Mitigation Work Programme’s facilitative, non-prescriptive character be preserved, that the adaptation goal remain balanced and Party-driven, and that no obligations beyond agreed mandates be introduced.

Ind