📰 ILO defends report on ‘modern slavery’
Reacts to India’s questioning the credibility of its estimates
•The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has defended its recent report on “modern slavery” after the Union government questioned the authenticity of its estimates last week.
•The ILO, which produced the report titled ‘Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage 2017’ along with Australia-based Walk Free Foundation (WFF), said that it doesn’t focus on specific countries but provides a global picture.
•“The estimates in the report do not focus on any one country but instead provide global and regional pictures of the situation,” an ILO spokesperson said in an e-mail to The Hindu .
•Although country-wise figures were not mentioned in the 2017 ILO-WFF report, the study showed that 40.3 million people were victims of ‘modern slavery’ in 2016.
•“The ILO does not recommend using these estimates to generate national statistics; however the ILO encourages member-states to implement their own national surveys for which the ILO can provide tested tools and technical support upon request,” the ILO said.
•Union Labour and Employment Secretary M. Sathiyavathy had written a letter to ILO Director General Guy Ryder on October 4 saying “neither the Central government was consulted before the study nor its credibility has been established.”
•“We would like to know the basis on which the data has been verified for credibility when apparently it has been neither verified with any official data source, including that of ILO nor any national governments have been consulted regarding the survey methodology,” the letter said.
IB missive
•The Labour and Employment Ministry’s rebuttal came following a missive from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) asking the government to counter multiple international organisations on reports about slavery in India that can hurt India’s image and exports.
•The Centre is exploring a rebuttal at an international level through consultations with the Ministry of External Affairs and other departments. The Labour and Employment Ministry is also planning to conduct its own surveys on bonded labour in a bid to counter various estimates by private agencies.
📰 Matrimonial disputes should be heard in camera: SC
Bench says video conferencing will hurt privacy; Justice Chandrachud dissents
•In a historic verdict, a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court, with a 2:1 majority, overruled its earlier orders to conduct matrimonial disputes cases through video conferencing, saying it is very doubtful whether the emotional bond can be established in a virtual meeting during video conferencing and it may even create a dent in the process of settlement.
•Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justice A.M. Khanwilkar on Monday agreed that matrimonial disputes should be conducted in camera in the spirit of Section 11 of the Family Courts Act of 1984 and video conferencing would destroy the privacy of the proceedings and probably defeat the cause of justice.
•“What one party can communicate with other, if they are left alone for sometime, is not possible in video conferencing… the expression of desire by the wife or the husband is whittled down and smothered if the Court directs that the proceedings shall be conducted through the use of video conferencing,” the majority judgment observed.
•Describing matrimonial proceedings as “sanguinely private”, the majority judgment said chances of “reconciliation requires presence of both the parties at the same place and the same time so as to be effectively conducted”.
•The majority judgment set aside a decision by a two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court led by Justice A.K. Goel on March 9, directing all high courts to issue administrative instructions to family courts across the country to open video conferencing facilities and use the technology to conduct marital disputes whenever one of the parties — husband or wife — requests for it. The court had said this would spare the parties the drudgery of appearing in person for the proceedings.
Technology as enabler
•In his dissenting judgment, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, the third judge on Chief Justice Misra’s Bench, differed with the opinions expressed in the majority verdict, saying modern technology like video conferencing is “above all a facilitator, enabler and leveler”.
•“Appropriate deployment of technology facilitates access to justice,” Justice Chandrachud wrote.
•The majority judgment, however, said video conferencing of marital disputes proceedings can be held if attempts at settlement fail and both the husband and wife mutually agree to it.
•The court points out that an estranged husband may file petitions to transfer the marital case from the place of residence of the wife to a place inconvenient for her. Video-conferencing may subsequently prove a handicap for her to state her case or reach a settlement.
•“The statutory right of a woman cannot be nullified by taking route to technological advancement and destroying her right under a law, more so, when it relates to family matters. In our considered opinion, dignity of women is sustained and put on a higher pedestal if her choice is respected,” the court held.
•Justice Chandrachud however, said it is a “fallacy” that an “in camera trial is inconsistent with the usage of video conferencing techniques”.
•Besides, he argued that video conferencing can come to the aid of spouses who face genuine difficulties arising from the personal or employment compulsions to attend court. “There may also be situations where parties (or one of the spouses) do not want to be in the same room as the other due to a history of marital abuse or misbehaviour of a psychiatric nature or substance abuse,” he observed.
📰 Hadiya accepts her marriage, says Supreme Court
Questions legality of Kerala High Court’s decision to put her in the custody of her father
•The Supreme Court on Monday observed that a High Court’s power to intervene in a habeas corpus petition and give custody of an adult woman to her father is restrained to circumstances when she is found to have been subjected to physical harm or torture or is psychologically depressed.
•“A father cannot say I will have custody of my daughter after the lady becomes an adult,” Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, leading a three-judge Bench, observed in the Hadiya case.
•The Bench was considering the legality of the Kerala High Court’s May 24 decision to annul the marriage of 24-year-old Hadiya, who had converted to Islam and subsequently married Shafin Jahan, a Muslim. The High Court had also placed her in her father’s custody. The court’s decision was based on a habeas corpus petition filed by Ms. Hadiya’s father.
•“She is an adult. A habeas corpus petition is filed in the Kerala High Court. In that case, her willingness has to be found to determine whether she was confined. She accepts the marriage. Can it be annulled in a habeas corpus petition,” Chief Justice Misra asked Additional Solicitor-General Maninder Singh.
•Mr. Singh, who appears for the National Investigation Agency (NIA), said the Supreme Court had given the agency the “limited” role of investigating the case, and the girl’s father’s lawyers should reply to the question.
•However, responding to the court’s question as a senior advocate, Mr. Singh said the High Court in its decision had referred to a Full Bench decision of the Kerala High Court which had held that a High Court can act as parent qua to adult children in certain circumstances.
•Senior advocate Dushyant Dave and advocate Haris Beeran, appearing for Mr. Jahan, submitted that the High Court decision was “highly unsustainable as the lady appeared on her own before the High Court, said she converted to Islam on her own accord and wanted to live with her husband”.
Personal liberties
•“Children when they become adults are entitled to their views. Her personal liberties have been taken away by a judicial order. Can the power of the state and the judiciary be turned against a 24-year-old who has filed affidavit after affidavit stating her willingness to the marriage? She has married me [Mr. Jahan] and this is just an attempt to broaden the issue,” Mr. Dave submitted.
•The Kerala government, in its turn, told the Supreme Court that a High Court could not, in a habeas corpus petition, annul the inter-religious marriage of an adult woman, if considered in a “purely legal” manner. However, the State government agreed that each case had to be seen according to its facts and circumstances. “If Your Lordships are asking me for a purely legal question, the High Court cannot annul such a marriage. That is if it is a completely legal question. But the facts and circumstances of the case should be taken note of,” senior advocate V. Giri, for Kerala, submitted.
📰 SC bans sale of crackers in Delhi
Will be in place till November 1
•The Supreme Court on Monday suspended the sale of firecrackers in Delhi and NCR till November 1, 2017 in a bid to test whether a Deepavali without firecrackers this year will have a “positive effect” on the health of citizens and a steadily deteriorating air quality.
•A Bench of Justices A.K. Sikri, A.M. Sapre and Ashok Bhushan reverted to its November 2016 decision to suspend sales of firecrackers “to test itself to find out whether there would be a positive effect of this suspension, particularly during Deepavali period.”
•“There is virtually a consensus in society that crackers should not be burnt during Deepavali, which can be celebrated with equal fervour by various other means as well...We have the direct evidence of deterioration of air quality at alarming levels, which happens every year. As already pointed out above, burning of these firecrackers during Deepavali in 2016 had shot up pm [particulate matter] levels by three times, making Delhi the worst city in the world, insofar as air pollution is concerned. Direct and immediate cause thereof was burning of crackers during Deepavali,” the court reasoned in its 20-page judgment. But the court said its September 12, 2017 decision — saying a total ban on firecrackers’ sale in Delhi NCR is too “radical a step” and a graded, gradual approach to a complete ban should be adopted — would be effective from November 1.
•“We are not tweaking the various directions contained in the orders dated September 12, 2017, the effect of that order would not be given during this Deepavali and, therefore, we are making it effective only from November 01, 2017. We are conscious of the fact that after the said order was passed, the police may have issued temporary licences. Accordingly, those are suspended forthwith so that there is no further sale in Delhi and NCR.”
📰 Knitting a safety net
Responsive social and care systems for mental health issues must be pursued relentlessly
•Durga spent more than half her adult life battling mental illness. Driven by allegiance towards her children, she seemed committed to recovery, following her first breakdown. Her daughters, now married, remained unwavering in their support. She, however, felt like a burden, and experienced a sense of alienation. Disheartened by seemingly inadequate standards of responsiveness on emotional and pragmatic needs, she felt let down by her family. Determined to die, rather than live a life bereft of the joy of mutually valued relationships or dignity of self-reliance, she set herself alight, undaunted by the finality of her decision.
•One wonders if longer periods of institutional care or financial recourse could have saved her; though irreconcilable experience of social distance seemed her primary disadvantage. Earlier, even when confronted by grave adversity, she had doggedly pursued the goal of securing her children’s safety and future, and fought social systems that ostracised her on multiple counts: economic class, gender, status of a widow, and indeed her mental illness. Her focus on achieving valued gains for her children gave her hope, purpose and meaning.
•Today, 800,000 persons die by suicide globally and over 1,33,000 in India every year. Among 15-29 year olds, it’s the second leading cause of death. Reasons attributed range from family problems and ill health to mental illness, debt, unemployment, failure in exams and relationships.
•Those who have studied the nature and manifestation of such profound distress attribute it to factors ranging from neural networks to unfulfilled expression of autonomy, affiliation, dominance, etc. We align our views to three theories. The first by psychologist Thomas Joiner, who posits that those who experience a ‘thwarted sense of belongingness’ and ‘perceived burdensomeness’ when coupled with a ‘sense of fearlessness’ are at highest risk. The second, by Emile Durkheim, who links diminished and extensive social connections or low and high integration with society, and suicide. The third, Marsha Linehan’s attributions, which include one’s biological predisposition, trauma and deficits in emotional self-regulation.
Why the distress?
•We argue that multiplicity of seemingly intractable material and existential problems results in turmoil, followed by confusion and apathy that invokes feelings of distance, unquietness and feeling trapped. Inability to grapple with the complexity of economic and social pressures of survival and conformity seem to result in an all-pervasive sense of hopelessness. While this hypothesis needs testing, it is evident that a breakdown in safety nets augments social vulnerabilities and builds insurmountable distress.
•History shares with us the essentiality of social policies that support those in distress through periods of economic lows. As accentuated levels of social suffering prevailed through the Great Depression in the U.S., at the intersections of health and social domains, it was death by suicide that showed significant increase in incidence, in comparison to most other ill health conditions. States that maintained social equilibrium safeguarded essential interests of the disadvantaged through uninterrupted investments in health, education and social sectors. In this context, it may be important to note that 70% of persons who died by suicide in India lived on an annual income of Rs. 1 lakh.
The way forward
•As we better understand predictors of suicide, key harm reduction theories emerge. Responsive health systems have to be pursued, unequivocally with a sense of commitment and urgency. While debt and ill health-related issues feature as disparate pieces that exacerbate distress, they come together in a vicious nexus to build despair. The injustice of relative poverty or the anguish of perpetual and intergenerational distress resulting from intractable structural barriers pose a form of uncategorised violence that result in passive resignation, and worse still, a lack of optimism and a chronic and irrefutable state of hopelessness.
•The Bhore Committee had stated that every Indian should be able to access health care “without the humiliation of proving their financial status, or the bitterness of accepting charity”. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stand true even today.
•In the case of the ultra-poor living with mental health issues, targeted social interventions such as the disability allowance, an entitlement, that helps mediate struggles of deprivation, and by extension, exclusion, mandated by the Mental Health Care Act and the Rights of Persons with Disability Act, must be better streamlined, adopting an integrated single window health and social care system that will minimise cumbersome bureaucracy.
•At a societal level, widening gaps linked to power and control may have defeated values of empathy and engaged compassion. Within families and across social groups, a mutual sense of responsibility and affiliation towards each other must be reinforced, through rituals and culture, social training or self-learning. Being kinder helps save lives and even as we celebrate diversity and agency, values of interdependence have to be strengthened.
•Finally, focus on personal meaning that motivates and goads one forward must be ardently pursued. Caught in the quagmire of everyday struggle and social forces, personal aspirations built on the foundation of dominant social norms may stealthily appropriate our authentic core, as we realign our values and positions and conform. Maybe the liberty of expression, that is considerate of heterogeneous social circumstances and yet free, will give us a fillip to discover our truth and a vital strain of hope.
📰 Fixing the steel frame
It is not as difficult as it sounds
•When we attained Independence in 1947, like British dominions such as Canada and Australia and colonies such as Malaya and Kenya, we continued to adopt the civil service system inherited from the British. The first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was aware that the colonial civil service system was unsuitable for a politically free, socially feudal and economically poor country such as ours. Lord Mountbatten, the “last Viceroy of India”, did little about it. Yes, we renamed our civil services, calling them the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IAAS), etc, but there has been only little change in practice. The IAS has continued to be deeply hierarchical and rule-bound rather than being driven by domain knowledge. Seniority is the basic criterion. We set up a brand new National Academy of Administration at Mussoorie, later to be called the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. It was meant to train young recruits for the administrative services.
The goal of the training imparted was still that of creating the all knowing “intelligent generalist”.
•Over the last 70 years, many incremental changes were made. Meanwhile, our erstwhile “mother country”, the U.K., went ahead even as early as the 1950s to radically restructure its civil service. The famous Fulton Commission shifted the focus from a system based only on seniority and “experience” to one which gave pride of place to domain knowledge. This would avoid such ‘atrocities’ such as the secretary, water resources becoming the defence secretary, and the joint secretary, health being promoted as additional secretary, home ministry, which are commonplace today. When a non-commissioned officer or a soldier joined the Indian Army as an infantry man, he remained one throughout his career. He never became an artilleryman, a member of the armoured corps, or even a member of the signals (communications), corps. Moreover, when an officer in one of these disciplines reached the level of a brigadier, he was required to go to the Defence Services Staff College (DSSC) to undergo a stiff examination. There were many objectives to those examinations, key among them being inculcating leadership qualities and a degree/level of domain knowledge. If he passed the examinations he became a major general and joined the elite of higher defence managers.
•I am strongly of the view that we need to adopt such a system for the IAS, at the director level. The equivalent of the DSSC would be the academy at Mussoorie. However, faculty from the Indian Institutes of Management and the Indian Institutes of Technology should also be brought in to deal with their areas of expertise.
Deeper changes
•But changing the character of the personnel system would not by itself be enough. Organisational charges in the area of government ministries departments are also needed.
•The core of those changes lies in the creation of “clusters/sectors” which are:
•Security cluster: home, defence, security and intelligence and maybe even the foreign service, atomic energy, space and information technology.
•Economic cluster: finance, commerce and industry.
•Engineering cluster: public enterprises, heavy industries, electronics, telecommunications, and micro, small and medium enterprises.
•Energy cluster: petroleum, coal, power and new and renewable energy.
•Chemical cluster: chemicals and petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals
•Transport sector: roads, ports, shipping and civil aviation, railways.
•Social sector: health including the Indian Council of Medical Research, education, social welfare and social justice and empowerment, women and child development.
•Rural sector: rural development, agriculture, agricultural research and education, Khadi and Village Industries Commission, water resources.
•Science and technology sector: science and technology, scientific and industrial research, biotechnology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, earth sciences, and environment and forests.
•A key component of the new training programme would be to assess and develop domain knowledge, and the director being trained for the sector. Once “streamed”, the civil servants can then spend the rest of their careers “rotating” within the sectors concerned.
📰 Towards transparency
Disclosures on judicial appointments are welcome, but the reasons must be spelt out
•The Supreme Court collegium’s decision to disclose the reasons for its recommendations marks a historic and welcome departure from the entrenched culture of secrecy surrounding judicial appointments. The collegium, comprising the Chief Justice of India and four senior judges, has said it would indicate the reasons behind decisions on the initial appointment of candidates to High Court benches, their confirmation as permanent judges and elevation as High Court Chief Justices and to the Supreme Court, and transfer of judges and Chief Justices from one High Court to another. This means there will now be some material available in the public domain to indicate why additional judges are confirmed and why judges are transferred or elevated. A certain degree of discreetness is necessary and inevitable as in many cases the reasons will pertain to sitting judges. At the same time, it would become meaningless if these disclosures fail to provide a window of understanding into the mind of the collegium. It is important to strike the right balance between full disclosure and opaqueness. The collegium has suggested as much, albeit obliquely, when it says the resolution was intended “to ensure transparency, yet maintain confidentiality in the Collegium system”. It is to be hoped that this balancing of transparency and confidentiality will augur well for the judiciary. The introduction of transparency acquires salience in the light of the resignation of Justice Jayant M. Patel of the Karnataka High Court after he was transferred to the Allahabad High Court as a puisne judge, despite his being senior enough to be a High Court Chief Justice.
•Going by the decisions disclosed so far with regard to the elevation of district judges, it is clear that quality of judgments, the opinion of Supreme Court judges conversant with the affairs of the high court concerned, and reports of the Intelligence Bureau together form the basis of an initial appointment being recommended. While district judges of sufficient seniority and in the relevant age group are readily available for consideration, there may be some unease about how certain advocates and not others come to be considered. Given the perception that family members and former colleagues of judges are more likely to be appointed high court judges, it is essential that a system to widen the zone of consideration is put in place. There are 387 vacancies in the various High Courts as on October 1. The mammoth task of filling these vacancies would be better served if a revised Memorandum of Procedure for appointments is agreed upon soon. A screening system, along with a permanent secretariat for the collegium, would be ideal for the task. The introduction of transparency should be backed by a continuous process of addressing perceived shortcomings. The present disclosure norm is a commendable beginning.
📰 Bay of Bengal diplomacy
India should foster regional cooperation on environment and disaster management
•India will seek to reaffirm its regional leadership in environmental and climate diplomacy as it hosts the first Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic CooperationDisaster Management Exercise (BIMSTEC DMEx 2017) starting October 10. Despite a decade of meaningful efforts in the sector, political and security tensions between members have hindered progress on regional cooperation and action. The renewed focus and enthusiasm of the regional leaders to rejuvenate BIMSTEC, after two decades of its existence, is therefore a welcome opportunity to boost effective cooperation in the sub-region.
•The BIMSTEC region, comprising 22% of the global population, is exposed to an ever-increasing threat from natural disasters. In the absence of a joint integrated mechanism to address the spurt in the scale, frequency and impacts of disasters, the response has largely been reactive and limited to post-incident crisis management. BIMSTEC, therefore, has the opportunity to enable a paradigm policy shift from a traditional relief centric, reactive approach towards a joint, proactive, holistic one. In order to strengthen inter-governmental coordination, the first step would be to devise a Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) regional action plan. The road map should reflect a clear strategy to integrate DRR in all development programmes of member nations, adopt a multi-hazard and multi-sectoral approach to DRR and work towards common outcomes through institutionalising partnerships across all levels of governance.
Building capacity
•Given the regional nature of the threats, there is an urgent need for setting up of regional institutional capacity for threat assessment and designing response strategies. An important challenge for disaster preparedness is addressing the knowledge gaps among the member countries. Setting up of research taskforces on various climate change and environment risks in the BIMSTEC sub-region can develop a common understanding of the threats, create standards for emergency management and come up with cost-effective solutions.
•India has volunteered to lead the Environment and Natural Disaster Agenda under BIMSTEC, and must make the best of this opportunity by translating the learnings from the disaster management experiences of SAARC and ASEAN. This is also an opportunity for India to take a measured approach and add value to its own regional agenda.
•Like other regional blocs, this initiative is set to take place amidst a long-standing climate of political discord amongst some of the member nations — Bangladesh, India and Myanmar. India’s tensions over transboundary Teesta river water sharing with Bangladesh, and the Rohingya refugee crisis between Myanmar and Bangladesh are cases in point. However, member nations must recognise that considering their regional setting and geographical proximity, the security of states in the sub-region is contingent upon each other and therefore, ‘Environment and Natural Disaster’ management would need to be prioritised as their common security agenda.
📰 At Bonn, stay the course
Renegotiation of the Paris Agreement on climate change is not a viable option
•Between November 6 and 17 this year, world leaders, delegates from various countries and others from business, along with media and other representatives of civil society will gather at Bonn for the 23rd Conference of Parties (COP-23) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The meeting will primarily concentrate on various aspects associated with the implementation of the Paris Agreement (PA), which was negotiated at COP-21 and entered into force, or became legally binding, on November 4, 2016.
•COP-23 will be presided by Frank Bainimarama, Prime Minister of Fiji. It is fitting that a Pacific island nation chairs this year’s COP as the very existence of low-lying islands is threatened by sea level rise due to climate change. The meetings in Bonn will cover a wide range of issues, including adjusting to living in a warmer world with the associated impacts, known as adaptation to climate change and reduction in greenhouse gases, referred to as mitigation. They will also include sessions on loss and damage, or the means of addressing economic and non-economic forfeitures and potential injury associated with climate change. Finally, the discussions will be about the implementation of targets that were decided by each country ahead of the Paris meeting, referred to as the nationally determined contributions (NDCs), and the finance, capacity building and technology transfer required by developing countries from rich nations.
•According to the procedures of the UNFCCC, the meetings in Bonn will include the session of COP-23, the 13th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 13) and the second part of the first session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA 1.2). The decision-making bodies for the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement are the COP, the CMP and the CMA, respectively. In addition, the Bonn meetings will include the 47th sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA 47), which assists on science and technology, and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI 47), which supports the work of the three bodies through assessment and review. Also, the Ad Hoc Working Group of the Paris Agreement will meet and is tasked with important issues such as NDCs, adaptation, transparency, and global stocktake.
Warming target
•At the Paris COP, countries agreed to try and limit global warming to 1.5°C but since previous discussions had centred on the Lakshman rekha of 2°C, this required renewed understanding of the policies and actions required to stay within a lower target. Half a degree reduction may seem really small, but in terms of the impacts on ecosystems, geophysical cycles and diverse life forms on earth, this is a substantial difference. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has therefore undertaken the task of preparing a special report on the impacts of a warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and the global response needed to achieve these.
•Many scientists who research climate change, however, believe that we are on our way to a world that is 4°C warmer and that limiting warming to less than 1.5°C is a pipe dream. A recent paper in Nature Geoscience by R.J. Millar and colleagues analyses scenarios to demonstrate that limiting warming to 1.5 °C is not yet a geophysical impossibility. But this would imply continuing to strengthen pledges for 2030, deepening the mitigation targets rapidly and deeply, and based on the current conditions in global discussions and national targets, it is not clear that emissions can drop precipitously.
•Article 14 of the Agreement provides the details on the targets, taking stock and reviewing them and the progress made towards long-term goals. The first such stock-taking covering all aspects such as mitigation, adaptation communications, and support for implementation is expected to take place in 2023, but meetings to prepare for this have already begun and have to conclude by 2018. Adaptation is increasingly also expected to become central at the COP meetings, which for the most part have focussed on mitigation. To learn more about the implications of the stocktaking, see the policy brief on the Centre for Science and Environment website.
Countries and challenges
•This is the first COP after the United States pulled out of the PA and the implications of this at a global platform are likely to become more evident. Several states and cities within the U.S. along with thousands of businesses and celebrities have used this chance to initiate voluntary actions across the country. For instance, billionaire and former Mayor of New York city, Michael Bloomberg, and California Governor Jerry Brown launched America’s Pledge, an initiative that is expected to report on the efforts of U.S. states, and sub-state entities to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) of the nine northeastern states has proposed another 30% drop in power plant emissions from 2020 to 2030.
•Moreover, it has been reported that a U.S. delegation will in any case attend the Bonn COP and all PA-related meetings until 2020, while other major signatories have reaffirmed their commitment to the PA. Nevertheless, there is speculation whether the formal withdrawal of the U.S. would alter the stance taken by Europe, Australia, and large countries at the COP and what role, if any, the U.S. would play behind the scenes.
•According to earlier reports from the UN and other groups, the NDCs, when added up, fall short of what is needed to keep global temperature rise below 2°C and will likely take us about a degree higher. Further, most NDCs are conditional — they depend on financial and technological support from rich countries for their full implementation.
•James Hansen, the distinguished climate scientist, writes in his blog that carbon dioxide and methane are increasing faster than a decade ago and that efforts being made now at the global and state levels are “half-measures”, and “soothing and baffling expedients”. As a result, young people will be “entering a period of consequences”. As disheartening as his remarks are, it is also evident that the political conditions prevalent today are not favourable to renegotiate the Paris Agreement. Since the planet and its inhabitants will still have to deal with the impacts of climate change, our only hope is to see a greater readiness on the part of all nations to compromise on their erstwhile hard positions, and sincerity to make progress in reducing emissions and building climate resilience in their development.
