United Nations, India has abstained from voting on a UN General Assembly resolution calling on countries to fulfill their climate change obligations, expressing concern that the draft “undermines” the “sacred architecture” of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The resolution was passed by the 193-member General Assembly on Wednesday with 141 votes in favor, 8 against, and 28 abstentions, including India.
India said it engaged constructively during the negotiations on the resolution and clarified its concerns and position at every stage.
“We are therefore disappointed that despite our best efforts to find common ground, our concerns have not been addressed,” the statement said.
Petal Gahlot, First Secretary of the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations, said in an explanation of the vote that the adoption of the resolution by the General Assembly does not create a binding commitment for India.
“Our obligations arise only from the outcomes adopted under the UNFCCC process. Therefore, India cannot vote in favor of this resolution based on our stated position on climate change-related issues,” she said.
The resolution entitled “Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Obligations of States with respect to Climate Change” welcomes the unanimous advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the obligations of States with respect to climate change issued in July 2025. It affirms the importance of the advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice as authoritative contributions to the clarification of existing international law.
India has long argued that climate obligations must be negotiated through the United Nations climate framework, which recognizes the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” under which developed countries, historically the largest emitters, should take the lead in reducing emissions and provide financial and technical support to developing countries.
The resolution, sponsored by the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, calls on all countries to abide by their obligations under international law and protect the climate system and environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
Countries are urged to take measures in accordance with the Paris Agreement and their own national conditions to limit the increase in global average temperature to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels.
India said the draft resolution failed to clearly reflect the “advisory and non-binding” nature of the ICJ’s opinion.
“We are therefore seriously concerned that the resolution, by elevating advisory opinions to binding or quasi-binding status, seeks to impose obligations on developing countries that have not yet been multilaterally agreed, thereby undermining the sacrosanct architecture of the UNFCCC process. This is a dangerous precedent that we must all be wary of,” Garrot said.
India noted that the resolution sets out specific mitigation pathways, sets out ambitious external benchmarks and creates conditions for possible judicial or quasi-judicial review of NDCs.
“This severely undermines national policy space and undermines the bottom-up architecture of the Paris Agreement,” Garrot said.
India and some developing countries have also expressed concerns in the past that attempts to give ICJ opinions greater legal force could expose national climate goals and domestic policy choices to international legal scrutiny outside the U.N. climate negotiation process.
India also objected to the lack of the word “climate finance” in the text of the resolution. “There is now ample evidence that the agreed climate finance targets for 2024 fail to meet the needs of developing countries and deserve more attention in resolutions dealing with national climate change obligations,” Gallot said, calling it a “serious omission.”
She said India believes that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement provide an agreed, equitable and complex framework for achieving climate goals.
Gallot stressed that sustainable development and poverty eradication remain overriding priorities for developing countries.
“Any transformation of the energy system must therefore be just, orderly and equitable, taking into account the needs of energy access, economic growth and social development. The resolution does not fully recognize these imperatives and limits developing countries’ policy space.
“This is compounded by the complete lack of mention of the need for developed countries to continue to take the lead in mitigating climate change and to provide developing countries with adequate and predictable financing, technology transfer and capacity-building to enable them to undertake such transformations,” Garrot said.
She also stressed the need to address the “historical injustice” faced by small island developing States and their vulnerability to climate change, noting that this was the basis of India’s development cooperation with these countries.
“It is for this reason that India did not vote against the resolution even though our concerns were not addressed in it,” Garrot said. He claimed that some elements of the resolution, such as excluding developing countries from means of implementation, were contrary to India’s “principled position” on climate action.
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
