By Business India Editorial

Claire Perry O'Neill, the chair of the 2020 UN climate talks taking place later this year, launched her global effort to mitigate the climate crisis and foster international cooperation with a handful of events and engagements in India over the past week.

O'Neill has served as UK's energy minister in the past. She had pushed for the country to adopt a net zero emissions law in 2019 and supported clean growth initiatives.

O’Neill met with Union minister for environment, forest & climate change Prakash Javadekar. “India put forth matters related to market mechanism and carbon credits, climate finance, technology transfer and we discussed ways and means to make #COP26 a success,” tweeted Javadekar, after the meeting. The minister was referring to the 26th session of the Conference of Parties (COP26) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that O’Neill will lead in Glasgow in November.

O’Neill also participated in a discussion on the need for crucial climate action in 2020 hosted by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

The engagements come in light of what some consider was a less-than satisfactory outcome at COP25, chaired by Chile in December 2019. “Key issues such as carbon markets, financing needs to address loss and damage, and the inability to get bigger emitters to commit to a more ambitious programme of climate action marked the last round of talks,” notes The Economic Times in a report on O’Neill’s India visit. 

Bearing in mind the “very negative atmosphere” of the December talks, O’Neill is calling for more transparency in negotiations and communications between all parties involved. She also pointed out that she’d like to use the COP summit to highlight positive work being done to mitigate the climate emergency around the world, and spoke of India’s vital role in this regard. 

“It is incredible that you have in India some 38 companies that have signed up for science-based targets and greater use of renewable energy. You have some of the most ambitious technological solutions being proposed, for example how to produce low carbon cement. We don’t celebrate enough India’s work in areas like cooling, a huge global need for the world. So as well as the negotiations, we are going to treat COP26 as an opportunity to celebrate and measure all of the other contributions that are being made to reduce emissions,” said O’Neill.