Professor T. Jayaraman from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai made a presentation titled “The rich fiddle while the world burns: A report on COP25,” on January 8, 2020 at the office of the Foundation. He began by describing the political context in which the 25th Conference of Parties (COP 25) was held in Madrid instead of Chile. Jayaraman characterised the phenomenon of climate change as “global warming in an unequal world,” which, therefore, calls for a differential responsibility between the developed and the developing countries with regard to climate action.

He also discussed the political implications of viewing carbon as a pollutant rather than a resource that is meant to be shared equitably by way of a carbon budget. Such a perspective does harm to the development goals of emerging economies such as India, Brazil, and China. Professor Jayaraman concluded that not much progress was made in Madrid at COP25, even though the room for negotiations and thus for climate action is steadily reducing.