India Withdraws Interest in Hosting COP33 Climate Meeting Due to Concerns Over National Positions

India is learnt to be no longer interested in hosting the COP33 climate meeting in 2028, official sources said on Wednesday. India had not formally bid for the event, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made the offer in December 2023, during the COP28 meeting in Dubai. COP, or Conference of Parties, is the annual meeting of the signatories to the 1994 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It also serves as the meeting of the signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement, and 1997 Kyoto Protocol. These meetings decide the global course of action on climate change. The sources did not spell out the reasons for India’s change of mind, but the rethink had been happening in government circles for the last one year. This, despite the fact that a COP33 cell had been set up under the Climate Change division in the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change last year to prepare the country for hosting the event. There was a growing realisation within the government that as the host and President of the conference, India would be expected to champion and prioritise the global cause on climate change which could sometimes come in conflict with its own national positions on many climate-related issues. COP33 is due to carry out a Global Stocktake (GST) of climate actions to assess how the world has progressed on the Paris Agreement target of keeping global rise in temperatures within 1.5 or 2 degree Celsius from pre-industrial times. The GST is an important mechanism set up under the Paris Agreement, to be carried out at five-year intervals. The first GST was held at COP28 in Dubai in 2023, and the second one is due for COP33. Countries are expected to raise the ambition of their climate action based on this exercise. There is greater scrutiny on the climate actions of the host country which is supposed to act as the global climate leader during its presidency. Besides, global events in the last few years, on the climate front and elsewhere, had substantially altered the climate negotiation landscape, with divisions between countries on several issues getting sharpened. India itself has been taking strong positions on some of these issues. As the host country, whose responsibility it is to forge a consensus and push the countries into making compromises, India would have been faced with the possibility of diluting its own positions.