New Delhi, (Asian independent) India and the US would launch the Climate Action and Finance Mobilisation Dialogue (CAFMD) on Monday as US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Change, John Kerry visits India as part of his multi-country tour in the run-up to the annual climate summit less than 50 days ahead.
The CAFMD is one of the two main tracks of the US-India Agenda 2030 Partnership that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden had announced at the Leaders Summit on Climate in April 2021. The other is the Strategic Clean Energy Partnership.
Slated to reach on Sunday, Kerry will be in India till September 14, meeting ministers, top bureaucrats, and private sector leaders. The US State Department has said Kerry will travel to India to “discuss efforts to raise global climate ambition and speed India’s clean energy transition.”
Kerry has visited Korea, Argentina, Japan, and China over last few days to continue vital discussions on reducing emissions and raising ambition ahead of COP26, the annual climate summit that in UK’s Glasgow.
A spokesperson from the Environment, Forests and Climate Change Ministry confirmed the CAFMD launch event on Monday but did not divulge further details.
Earlier in the year, in their joint statement at the launch of the “India-US Climate and Clean Energy Agenda 2030 Partnership”, the two nations had said: “Through this collaboration, India and the United States aim to demonstrate how the world can align swift climate action with inclusive and resilient economic development, taking into account national circumstances and sustainable development priorities.”
On August 24, Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav had held a telephonic conversation with Kerry to discuss CAFMD Track and had said these platforms provide greater opportunities for working together for climate actions and emphasized that India stands committed to working with the US on clean energy.
The annual climate summit, the Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), at Glasgow from October 31, is being seen as a last ditch effort to bring around countries to enhance their emission targets to keep the global temperatures from rising to beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-Industrial era.
On September 9, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had released its sixth Assessment Report of the Working Group I (AR6WGI), Kerry had tweeted: “Life is about making choices, and we’re facing the biggest one yet. The @IPCC_CH report makes it clear our window is narrowing, but it’s not too late to act. We must choose to earnestly respond to the climate crisis while we still can.”
