India, the world’s No. 3 greenhouse gas emitter, will join the Paris Agreement on climate change on Oct. 2, the Times of India reported Sunday. The announcement, made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a speech at the Bharatiya Janata Party council meeting in Kozhikode, India, comes days after a special event hosted by the U.N. aimed at accelerating the accord’s entry into force.
The Paris Agreement, which establishes a legal framework under which nations are to pursue nationally determined actions to address climate change, will enter into force 30 days after 55 nations representing at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions have formally joined. As of Sept. 21, the date of the U.N. special event, 60 nations representing 47.76 percent of global emissions done so.
The bulk of the 47.76 percent comes from the top two emitters, China and the U.S., which joined the agreement earlier this month. They are responsible for 20.09 percent and 17.89 percent of emissions, respectively. India’s ratification would push the ticker to 51.86 percent, leaving only 3.14 percent to other countries.
According to a Sept. 21 U.N. media report, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, the European Union, France, Germany, Hungary, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Poland, and South Korea pledged to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to deposit their instruments of ratification this year.
If only the non-EU nations make good on their pledge the emissions ticker will sit at 58.97 percent. In fact, if only Australia and Canada join the agreement the second 55 threshold will be broken.
The EU is something of an unknown at this point as its ratification process is more complicated. Initially, it was understood that all European Union member states would have to first ratify the agreement at the domestic level before the EU as a party to the agreement could ratify as a whole.
However, the EU said last week it would join the agreement before all of its member states have ratified at the domestic level. It remains unclear how the emissions contributions of the EU member states then will be factored into the 55 percent threshold.
If the 55/55 threshold is met before Oct. 8, the agreement will enter into force before the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, scheduled for Nov. 7-18 in Marrakesh, Morocco.
