Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to articulate his government’s ambitions on renewable energy and make a call for a coalition for disaster resilient infrastructure at UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ High-Level Climate Action Summit on Monday.
PM Modi is among the first set of speakers at the Summit’s opening ceremony, a highly significant gesture given that only those Heads of State, Government and Ministers are invited to speak at the summit who will have any “positive development” to announce on climate action.
India’s important role and contribution to global climate action efforts have been underlined by the fact that PM Modi is the fourth speaker at the Summit, after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and President of Marshall Islands Hilda Heine. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will speak after PM Modi.
The Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015 and aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
PM Modi has said that India has a capacity of 4GW and the country has set a target of adding 100 GW of solar power by 2022.
Only, 63 nations have been invited to speak at the summit. The US, Brazil and Japan are not speaking at the high-level event.
Akbaruddin further said that India is expected to talk about the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, a group of about 30 plus countries that will work towards common goals of having infrastructure, which is resilient to climate and disaster. India is working with countries like the UK and small island states like Fiji and Maldives who face problems of climatic nature.
The Climate Action Summit will see leaders make national statements, followed by statements of coalitions and national statements again.