Paris Agreement architecture and India’s Stand.

1. Temperature goal and purpose: The treaty aims to hold the rise in global average temperature well below 2 C and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 C, while strengthening adaptation and making finance flows consistent with low-emissions and climate-resilient development.
2. Nationally Determined Contributions at the core: Every Party must prepare, communicate and maintain successive NDCs and pursue domestic measures to achieve them, with each new NDC representing progression.
3. Five-year ambition cycle: The Agreement works in cycles that “ratchet up” ambition through periodic NDC updates informed by science and equity.
4. Global Stocktake to assess collective progress: Once every five years Parties take stock of implementation to assess collective progress toward long-term goals, considering mitigation, adaptation and means of implementation in the light of equity and best available science. The outcome is meant to inform future NDCs.
5. Enhanced Transparency Framework: Common reporting and review for all Parties with flexibility for developing countries that need it, delivered through biennial transparency reports, technical expert review and multilateral consideration of progress. Modalities, procedures and guidelines were adopted at Katowice.
6. Mitigation accounting rules: Accounting must promote transparency, accuracy, completeness, consistency and comparability and track progress toward NDCs in line with agreed guidance.
7. Adaptation architecture: A global goal on adaptation is established to enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability, supported by country “adaptation communications” that feed into the stocktake and guide support.
8. Loss and damage recognition: Article 8 anchors averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage and places the Warsaw International Mechanism under the Agreement’s authority, identifying areas for cooperation such as early warning, insurance and non-economic losses.
9. Finance obligations and balance: Developed countries have a legal duty to provide financial resources, with clarity on support provided and received under the transparency framework, and with an aim for balance between adaptation and mitigation support.
10. Technology and capacity building: The Technology Mechanism serves the Agreement under a new technology framework, and the Paris Committee on Capacity-building advances long-term, country-driven capacity efforts.
11. International cooperation under Article 6: Three avenues exist for cooperation: internationally transferred mitigation outcomes under Article 6.2, a new UN crediting mechanism under Article 6.4, and non-market approaches under Article 6.8.
12. Implementation and compliance committee: Article 15 creates an expert-based committee that is facilitative, transparent and non-punitive, with attention to national capabilities and circumstances.

India’s main message

Do not use COP30 to change the architecture of the Paris Agreement. Keep the existing balance among mitigation, adaptation and means of implementation, guided by equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.

1. Equity and CBDR-RC as cornerstone: India reaffirmed that equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities(CBDR-RC) remain the foundation for any outcome, warning against shifts that dilute differentiation between developed and developing countries.
2. Climate finance as binding obligation: India reminded Parties that Article 9.1 creates a legal duty on developed countries to provide finance, and pressed for scaled-up, predictable, concessional flows, with a stronger focus on adaptation.
3. Technology and capacity access: India called for reliable, affordable access to climate technologies and for removal of intellectual property and market barriers that impede transfer to developing countries.
4. Caution on unilateral trade measures: India flagged carbon-related unilateral measures as protectionist risks and pointed to UNFCCC Article 3.5 principles against disguised trade restrictions.
5. Stocktake and science integrity: In pre-COP remarks, India supported the stocktake’s role but urged rigor, accuracy and balanced use of scientific inputs in future assessment processes.
6. Call to preserve Paris design rather than rewrite it: The consistent thread across India’s interventions is to protect the current Paris design of bottom-up NDCs plus equity-based support systems, and to focus the next phase on implementation rather than redesign.