A carbon market offers benefits we should seize

While a robust carbon-pricing mechanism will take time, effort and capital to put in place, we can expect it to catalyse climate action and give India a chance to lead the Global South

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The feeble outcomes of this year's UN climate summit, CoP-30, held at Belém in Brazil were a reflection of today's geopolitical realities.

The US does not recognize the threat of global warming, while several other large economies like Russia, China and India are in no mood to embark on a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels. This does little to counter nature's response to the rise in heat-trapping carbon and methane emissions, seen in all kinds of environmental disasters like forest fires stoked by drought and increasingly heavy rainfall and floods. Earlier this week, the EU's Earth observation service Copernicus noted that for the first time, a three-year average from 2023 to 2025 is about to exceed the 1.5° Celsius cap on warming (above the pre-industrial level), after which the planet faces irreversible damage.