India And China Need To Explain Themselves On Coal Issue, COP26 President Sharma Says

India, China and other coal-dependent developing nations rejected a clause calling for a "phase out" of coal-fired power to "phase down"

Britain's President for COP26 Alok Sharma speaks during a press conference inside the Downing Street Briefing Room in central London on November 14, 2021 | Photo AFP

New Delhi: China and India have to explain to developing nations on watering down the COP26 climate deal, warned the event's president Alok Sharma on Sunday after the UN climate talks in Glasgow concluded a day earlier.

The climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland ended with a deal focused on fossil fuels for the first time. Sharma's statement comes on the back of India, China, and other coal-dependent developing nations rejecting a clause calling for a "phase out" of coal-fired power where the text was changed to "phase down".

"In terms of China and India, they will on this particular issue have to explain themselves," said Britain's president of the climate conference at Downing Street in London, according to Reuters.

According to the Guardian,  Sharma feared that the deal would be lost when China and India – both heavily dependent on coal power – attempted to reopen the text of the deal by objecting to a commitment to “phase out” coal.

He mentioned the countries proposing the slightly weaker “phase down”, which implies that they could still carry on using coal in some way. The commitment, contained in the “cover decision” from the Cop26 summit, does not attach any deadline to the use of coal but is regarded as significant as it marks the first time such a resolution has been agreed by a UN climate conference.

On the other hand, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: "Whether the language was 'phase down' or 'phase out' doesn't seem to me as a speaker of English to make that much difference.

"The direction of travel is pretty much the same." The British PM said the UN climate talks had delivered a mandate to reduce the dependency of a coal-powered generation that was backed up by real action from individual counties.

"When you add all that together, it is beyond question that Glasgow has sounded the death knell for coal power," he said at the press conference.

However, Johnson, who was delighted at the progress achieved, was disappointed that the deal did not go further. "Sadly, that's the nature of diplomacy," he said. "We can lobby, we can cajole, we can encourage, but we cannot force sovereign nations to do what they do not wish to do.