GS 2: IR | Bilateral, regional & global groupings & agreements involving India &/or affecting India’s interests

Why in news?

• The 27th BASIC Ministerial Meeting on Climate Change was held in New Delhi.In this meeting, the effective implementation of the Paris Agreement to combat climate change was discussed by the member countries.

Objective:

• The BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) group recently met to put pressure on developed countries to meet pre-2020 climate efforts, and to “progressively” and “substantially” scale up their financial support for future action.

Highlights:

• The 24th Session of the of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24) is scheduled to be held in Katowice, Poland in December 2018. The COP24 will work out and adopt a package of decisions to ensure the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
• In the meeting, the Paris Agreement was considered as the significant step to advance global action against climate change by the participating BASIC countries.
• The member countries also reaffirmed their commitment to the implementation of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) its Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement.
• BASIC member countries will continue to remind developed countries about their earlier commitment to provide $100 billion annually from 2020.
• The participating BASIC counties also requested developed countries to take actions to fill pre-2020 implementation gaps by 2023 which according to them can be used for first Global Stocktake (GST). Brazil will host the next BASIC Meeting.

Global Stocktake:

• It refers to a proposed five-yearly review of the impact of countries’ climate change actions.
• Under the Paris Agreement, every country must present a climate action plan in five-yearly cycles.
• Under the Paris Agreement, the first global stocktake will happen in 2023.
• It will assess whether the net result of the climate actions being taken was consistent with the goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature from pre-industrial times to within 2 degree Celsius.

BASIC:

• BASIC is a group of four large industrialized countries which comprise Brazil, South Africa, India, and China. It was formed under an agreement in November 2009 wherein the member countries committed to acting at Copenhagen climate summit 2009 jointly.