India expresses reservations at climate summit

India has expressed its reservation over the lack of equity in the rules relating to global stock-take in the rulebook that implements the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement. "India wishes to express its strong reservation regarding the treatment of equity in the global stock-take decision," India`s lead negotiator Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Saturday at the plenary.

"Equity is specifically mentioned in Article 14 of the Paris Agreement. It is the basic principle of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement along with the common but differentiated responsibilities," he said. "The entire global stock-take exercise will be lopsided if the process, input, the technical assessment and output of the global stock-take does not fully address equity.

"Equity demands that the vulnerabilities, problems and challenges of the poor and marginalised be prioritised to ensure climate justice," Prasad said. Nearly 200 nations agreed to enforce rules on implementing the Paris Agreement.

Negotiations at the UN Climate Change Conference, also known as COP24, dragged on into the final hours of Saturday, one full day beyond the original deadline, suffering some holdback due to certain objections of Brazil and Turkey.

The talks finally ended with the 133-page Paris rulebook being unanimously adopted in the Polish city of Katowice. Vishal Gulati is in Katowice at the invitation of Climate Trends to cover the 24th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as COP24.