Bonn climate meet takeaways

GS Paper - 3 (Environment)

The Bonn climate change conference that finished, was built up as an opportunity for course correction. With current global efforts to keep rising temperatures in check abysmally inadequate, a massive and immediate scale-up in climate action is essential to keep alive any realistic chance of meeting the 1.5 degree or 2 degree Celsius targets. Bonn was expected to act as the springboard for accelerated action. But just like the more famous year-ending climate conferences, Bonn underperformed. Developed and developing countries bickered on issues old and new, and could not even agree on the agenda of one of the meetings till the penultimate day.

Global Stocktake

• One thing that the countries did manage to wrap up, however, was the third and final round of technical discussions on global stocktake, or GST.
• Mandated by the 2015 Paris Agreement, GST is an exercise aimed at assessing the progress in the fight against climate change, and deciding ways and means to enhance global action to bridge the adequacy gap. The Paris Agreement says GST must be conducted every five years, starting in 2023.
• The actual meat in GST would come in at COP28, the year-ending climate conference, this time being held in Dubai.
• The technical discussions just produced a short ‘framework’ on the elements to be included in the stocktake exercise.
• Even this saw repeated squabbling between the developed and developing countries, mainly over provisions related to finance and ‘historical responsibility’ of the rich countries.
• But what riled the developing countries the most was a statement from Australia seeking to downplay the ‘historical responsibility’ of the developed countries in causing global warming.
• A bulk of the accumulated greenhouse gas emissions, the reason for global warming, have come from a group of about 40 rich and industrialised countries, usually referred to as Annex I countries because they were mentioned in Annexure I of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC.
• This historical responsibility has been the basis for the differentiated burden-sharing on developed and developing countries in the climate change framework.

Money matters

• Apart from GST, another mechanism was set up at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 for climate action. Called Mitigation Work Programme (MWP), this is a temporary emergency exercise focused only on increasing emission cuts.
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says global emissions have to come down by 43% from 2019 levels by 2030 to keep alive hopes of meeting the 1.5 degree target. As of now, emissions are still growing and, in 2021, were higher than 2019 levels.
• Discussions at the MWP ran into trouble after developing countries complained that while they were being asked to strengthen their climate actions, developed countries were yet to offer the enabling finance and technology transfers. Most developing countries, including India, have said they would be able to act more if international support in the form of money and technology transfer was made available.
• Developed countries are under an obligation to support the implementation of climate action plans of developing countries through money and tech transfers. But money has been in perennial short supply.
• According to one assessment, developing countries need as much as US$ 6 trillion between now and 2030 just to implement their climate action plans.
• The loss and damage needs of developing countries are assessed to be about US$ 400 billion every year. More funds are needed for all kinds of other purposes, the total estimated to be running in several trillions of dollars every year.
• Against this, even a minuscule-looking US$ 100 billion per year that the developed countries had committed to raise from 2020 is not fully available.

The 'Bridgetown Initiative'

GS Paper - 3 (Environment)

President Macron hosts a summit in Paris starting on 22 June 2023 to discuss reform of the world's multilateral finance institutions in the face of climate change and other development challenges. A key topic of discussion will be suggestions from a group of developing countries, led by Barbados, dubbed the 'Bridgetown Initiative'.

The key demands of the Bridgetown Initiative are:

LIQUIDITY SUPPORT

• U.N. member states should fast-track the transfer of $100 billion in so-called 'Special Drawing Rights', a monetary reserve currency, to programmes that support climate resilience and subsidise lending to low-income countries.
• The International Monetary Fund should suspend surcharges - additional interest payments imposed on heavily indebted borrowing countries - for two to three years.
• It should restore "enhanced access limits" established during the COVID pandemic for two emergency financial support instruments, the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) and Rapid Financing Instruments.

DEBT SUSTAINABILITY

• G20 creditor countries should redesign their Common Framework for restructuring the debt of poor countries in default, notably by speeding up debt relief talks and allowing middle-income countries to access it.
• The IMF should encourage the restructuring of unsustainable debt in a way that is consistent across countries, and change the way it analyses the debt to incentivise investments that create future savings, such as those for climate adaptation.
• Public and private creditors should include disaster clauses in lending deals to allow countries to divert debt payments to disaster relief, and refinance high-interest and short-term debt with credit guarantees and longer maturities.
• U.N. member states should agree to raise $100 billion a year for a fund to help pay for the climate-related loss and damage suffered by developing countries.

PRIVATE CAPITAL

• The IMF and multilateral development banks should offer $100 billion a year in currency risk guarantees to drive private sector investment in projects that would help developing countries make the transition to a low-carbon economy.
• They should also expand their support to countries to help them create a pipeline of investable projects, and make greater use of blended finance and other structures where public lenders take on more project risk.

DEVELOPMENT LENDING

• The G20 and other shareholders of the World Bank, IMF and development institutions should fully implement the 2022 recommendations of a panel of experts aimed at boosting lending by the multilateral development banks.
• They should commit an extra $100 billion a year in fresh capital to the various institutions and move the Special Drawing Rights capital to multilateral development banks, starting with the African Development Bank by September 2023.

TRADING

• Groups such as the World Trade Organisation and other major trading partners should work with governments to strengthen supply chains to make them more resilient, ensure they benefit countries that produce raw materials and protect the vulnerable.

GOVERNANCE

• The governmental shareholders of International Financial Institutions should change the way they are structured and run to make them more "inclusive and equitable".

THE Asia Rankings 2023

GS Paper - 2 (Education)

Eighteen Indian universities have made their way into the top 200 in the Times Higher Education’s (THE) annual Asia university rankings for 2023, with the Indian Institute of Science continuing to rank the highest among Indian institutions at the 48th position. However, IISc has fallen six positions compared to last year.

More about the rankings

• Overall, India has one university in the top 50, four universities in the top 100, and 18 universities in the top 200.
• Last year, 17 higher education institutions figured in the top 200 club. This time, JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research is once again the second-highest ranked university at the 68th position, as opposed to the 65th rank in 2022.
• This is followed by Shoolini University of Biotechnology and Management Sciences (77th), which has made its debut in the top 200 this year, and Mahatma Gandhi University (95th).
• However, even as the count of total Indian universities in the top 200 has gone up marginally, many have registered a drop in their performance.
• For instance, IISc’s rank has fallen for the fifth consecutive year, from 27 in 2016 to 48 this year. JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research has also dipped by three positions this year, and IIT Ropar registered the sharpest drop of 63 positions, from the 68th rank to 131 this year.
• An upward trend was noticeable in IIIT Hyderabad’s performance, which moved up from the 174th rank to 106 this year.
• A few universities have dropped out of the top 200 this year altogether. Jawaharlal Nehru University (167th in 2022) and IIT Gandhinagar (120th last year) are notable names missing from the top 200 this year.
• China’s Tsinghua Universityleads the rankings with the top spot, followed by Peking University and the National University of Singapore.
• However, the overall rankings are dominated byJapan (117), followed by China (95), India (75), Iran (65) and Turkey (61).

Flashback

• This is the 11th annual edition of the Asia University Rankings by THE, a British magazine that reports on higher education.
• In its assessment, THE uses performance indicators in the areas of teaching, research, citations, international outlook and industry income.
• Universities from 31 countries, from Turkey in the west to Japan in the east, participate in the rankings.

Face Authentication in PM Kisan app

GS Paper - 3 (ITC)

Ina first for any central welfare scheme, the government rolled out a face authentication feature in the PM-Kisan app, which will enable beneficiary farmers to complete their e-KYC process by just scanning their face on mobile phones instead of using one-time password or fingerprints.

More about the News:

• PM-Kisan scheme has become the first scheme of the government to do e-KYC through facial authentication mobile app.
• This app is very much useful for the farmers who are aged and also their mobile number is not linked with their Aadhaar
• The Agriculture ministry began pilot testing of the face authentication feature in the PM-Kisan mobile app on May 21 this year. Since then, e-KYC of 3 lakh farmers has been done successfully
• Until now, e-KYC of the PM-Kisan beneficiaries used to be done through either biometrics at a designated centre or one-time passwords sent to mobile phone numbers linked with Aadhaar.
• However, during the e-KYC exercise, officials found many instances when farmers’ mobile numbers were not linked to Aadhaar due to which the process could not be completed.
• In the case of biometrics, several elderly farmers faced problems going to the nearby centre. Also, many faced the issue of non-matching of fingerprints.
• Therefore, to ease the e-KYC process, the ministry decided to introduce the face authentication feature in the PM-Kisan mobile app
• The face authentication feature uses iris data of a person having an Aadhaar number.
• The PM-Kisan scheme is also integrating with Bhashini to provide farmers information in their native language.
• Bhashini is the government’sNational Public Digital Platform for languages to develop services and products for citizens by leveraging the power of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

About the scheme

• The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi or PM-Kisan scheme gives beneficiaries financial assistance of Rs 6,000 per year in three equal instalments every four months.
• The amount is transferred to the bank accounts of eligible farmers’ families across the country through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) mode.
• According to the Agriculture Ministry, more than 11 crore farmers have availed the scheme and an amount of Rs 2.42 lakh crore has been transferred to their accounts.