‘Developing nations need to leapfrog fossil fuels era’

Three years. That's how long before the world crosses the 1.5°C threshold, with only 130 gigatons of carbon dioxide space remaining.

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Yet at COP30 in Brazil last month, wealthy nations — responsible for four-fifths of historical emissions — resisted discussing their financial obligations while 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists ensured the final agreement never mentioned the words “fossil fuel”.This failure reflects the persistent problem of climate action, and a deeper crisis of climate justice, according to University of Amsterdam professor Joyeeta Gupta, who has tracked climate negotiations for three decades.

Speaking in an online session at the 23rd Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, Gupta rued that there is not enough attention to the rapidly shrinking emission headroom. “That's one of the big problems—we are not taking this story-line that there is very little CO2 emission space left seriously”.

Instead, nations are retreating into a “hegemonic response”: hoarding resources, refusing responsibility, and delaying action through “problematic narratives” like net zero and managed overshoot, she added in the session with Binayak Dasgupta.

The University of Amsterdam professor, who co-chaired the Earth Commission and was a lead author of the 2007 IPCC report that won the Nobel Peace Prize, offered a stark assessment of the UN Climate Conference in Belém. While the gathering acknowledged for the first time that overshooting 1.5°C is likely, the solutions being relied upon are fundamentally flawed, she argued.