GLASGOW: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be presenting the formal position on India’s climate action agenda and lay out the best practices and achievements in the sector at the COP26 summit in Glasgow on Monday.
“Landed in Glasgow. Will be joining the COP26 Summit, where I look forward to working with other world leaders on mitigating climate change and articulating India’s efforts in this regard,” Modi said on Twitter soon after he landed here from the G20 Summit in Rome on Sunday night.
Modi was received to the notes of Scottish bagpipes as he arrived at his hotel in Glasgow, where he was greeted by a large group of Indian diaspora representatives with chants of “Bharat Mata Ki Jai”.
On Monday morning, he is scheduled to hold a meet and greet with around 45 Indian diaspora representatives from Glasgow and Edinburgh, including prominent medics, academics and business people.
He will also meet the Indian winner of Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, Delhi-based recycling firm Takachar founder Vidyut Mohan, and 14-year-old prize finalist from Tamil Nadu Vinisha Umashankar, inventor of a solar-powered ironing cart.
He will then proceed for the opening ceremony of day one of the World Leaders’ Summit of the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), being held at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow.
Modi’s bilateral meeting with his British counterpart Boris Johnson is expected to take place soon after Monday’s opening ceremony, which will include cultural performances and a speech by Johnson.
Johnson has said the summit will be the ”world’s moment of truth” and has urged world leaders to make the most of it.
”The question everyone is asking is whether we seize this moment or let it slip away,” he said, ahead of the two-week conference.
According to official sources, the Johnson-Modi talks are expected to be quite brief and will focus on the UK-India climate partnership as well as a stock-take of the 2030 Roadmap for stronger UK-India Strategic Partnership – signed by the two leaders during a virtual summit in May this year.
Modi is expected to reiterate his invitation for Johnson to visit India.
“Both governments remain committed to the implementation of the Roadmap, within prescribed timelines. Accordingly, we are looking to launch negotiations in November 2021 for an Interim Agreement to be signed in March 2022 and eventually a comprehensive agreement, if all goes according to schedule, by November 2022,” India’s High Commissioner to the UK, Gaitri Issar Kumar, said ahead of the prime ministerial talks.
It would be the first in-person meeting between Modi and Johnson following the latter’s twice cancelled visit to India earlier this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The bilateral meeting will be followed by a leader-level COP26 event entitled Action and Solidarity: The Critical Decade, for which the UK has extended a special invitation for Modi to deliver an address on the subject of ”adaptation”.
“India is among the top countries in the world in terms of installed renewable energy, wind and solar energy capacity. At the WLS, I will share India’s excellent track record on climate action and our achievements,” Modi said in a statement ahead of the summit.
“I will also highlight the need to comprehensively address climate change issues including equitable distribution of carbon space, support for mitigation and adaptation and resilience building measures, mobilisation of finance, technology transfer and importance of sustainable lifestyles for green and inclusive growth,” he said.
At the end of day one of the World Leaders’ Summit on Monday, Modi will join more than 120 Heads of Government and Heads of State at a special VVIP reception at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum – one of Scotland’s most popular visitor attractions.
The reception will also involve members of the royal family, including Prince Charles and wife Camilla and Prince William and wife Kate Middleton. Queen Elizabeth II was due to attend this special reception but pulled out last week after a medical advice against travel.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will tell world leaders at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow on Monday as he commits to increase the UK’s climate finance by GBP 1 billion by 2025.
In an address at the World Leaders Summit opening ceremony, to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Johnson will urge all countries to take concrete steps on phasing out coal, accelerate the transition to electric vehicles, and halt deforestation, as well as supporting developing nations on the frontline of the climate crisis with climate finance.
These actions will be highlighted as making the biggest difference in reducing emissions this decade on the world’s path to net zero and keeping alive the global aim of limiting rising temperatures to 1.5 Celsius under the Paris Agreement.
“Humanity has long since run down the clock on climate change. It’s one minute to midnight and we need to act now,” Johnson will say in his address to the summit.
“If we don’t get serious about climate change today, it will be too late for our children to do so tomorrow,” he will say.
The UK claims to be leading by example by doubling its International Climate Finance commitment to GBP 11.6 billion over five years in 2019, and Johnson’s announcement on Monday would take this to a “world-leading” GBP 12.6 billion by 2025, if the UK economy grows as forecast.
“We have to move from talk and debate and discussion to concerted, real-world action on coal, cars, cash and trees. Not more hopes and targets and aspirations, valuable though they are, but clear commitments and concrete timetables for change. We need to get real about climate change and the world needs to know when that’s going to happen,” Johnson will say.
The UK’s International Climate Finance is drawn from the overseas aid budget which, as set out in the UK’s Spending Review announced earlier this week, is forecast to return to 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) in 2024-25.
The funds are ear-marked for life-changing programmes around the world, shoring up the defences of communities on the frontline of climate change, protecting nature and biodiversity, and supporting the global transition to clean and green energy.
Later on Monday, day one of the World Leaders’ Summit, Boris Johnson will use the UK’s presidency of COP26 to bring round one table some of the world’s biggest economies with the countries most vulnerable to climate change to hear what is at stake for countries if action is not taken now and set the tone for two weeks of negotiations to come.
The COP26 climate summit comes six years after the Paris Agreement was signed by over 190 countries to limit rising global temperatures to well below 2C with a view of reaching 1.5C.
According to the UN, global temperatures are currently set to rise to 2.7C.
Scientists are clear that emissions must halve by 2030 to keep the aims made in Paris within reach.
The UK lists its climate action targets as one of the “most ambitious”, to cut emissions by at 68 per cent by 2030 as part of its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which was the highest reduction target made by a major economy.
