Berlin When the most important meeting on global climate protection begins on Monday lunchtime in Glasgow, Scotland, one of the first speakers will be Angela Merkel. The German Chancellor, only executive in office, could freely call for more ambition in climate protection – and thus set the tone at the United Nations’ two-week world climate conference.
In view of the less ambitious signals from China and India, but also from Australia, Brazil and Mexico, the omens of the conference are bad. At the end of 2015, the international community reached an agreement on the Paris Climate Agreement in the French capital.
This is intended to limit global warming to below two degrees Celsius, or better than 1.5 degrees, compared to pre-industrial times, in order to mitigate the greatest destructive forces of unchecked climate change.
Six years later, 1.5 degrees are “the undisputed goal of the world community”, as Jochen Flasbarth, State Secretary in the Federal Environment Ministry, emphasizes. However, the international community is currently heading for global warming of 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The emissions continue to rise, the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere is at a peak.
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In addition, the previous commitments made by the federal states on climate protection fall far short of what is necessary. The following overview shows what the participants at the climate conference, or COP (Conference of the Parties) for short, are wrestling with:
1. Increase ambitions
The key question is whether it will be possible to persuade other countries to sharpen their previous climate targets. To date, the global average temperature has increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius. The consequences are extreme weather events around the globe: heavy rain and flood disasters in Germany, China, India and the USA, heat waves in the USA and Canada, forest fires in Greece, drought in Madagascar.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change determined in the summer that the climate-damaging CO2 emissions would have to be halved by 2030 compared to 2010 in order to be able to maintain the agreed temperature limit of 1.5 degrees. Since emissions have increased since then, the challenges facing the global community have tended to increase in this decade.
According to observers, China, which accounts for almost a third of absolute global emissions, is currently playing a rather disappointing role. “China’s climate protection commitments are insufficient to even come close to meeting the 1.5 degree limit,” says Lutz Weischer, head of the Berlin office of the environmental and development organization Germanwatch. China submitted its new climate targets to the UN on Thursday.
The Chinese president will not be present at the COP.
(Photo: dpa)
However, it only renews the rather weak promise that China’s emissions should only increase until 2030 and that the country wants to become greenhouse gas neutral by 2060, ten years later than the European Union, for example. “China, as the world’s largest emitter, is not doing justice to its self-formulated claim of wanting to take on a leading role in global climate protection,” said Weischer.
The superpower is hiding behind the EU and the US. It also fits that President Xi Jinping will not personally travel to the climate summit. As long as neither the USA nor the EU have credibly demonstrated the concrete measures they actually want to take to achieve their climate goals, skepticism apparently dominates in China as to whether a faster switch to climate neutrality is actually worthwhile, says the climate expert.
Emerging countries like India have to step up
The EU and US had to make progress as soon as possible in underpinning their goals in order to be able to increase the pressure on China in the coming months in a credible way. But problems lurk here too. The USA, with Joe Biden at the helm, rejoined the Paris Agreement after ex-President Donald Trump did not want to have anything to do with climate protection.
But national climate legislation and, above all, the necessary programs are facing headwinds in Congress. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, on the other hand, expects that not only Europe will act, but that there will also be enough partners who will be held accountable.
But emerging countries such as India, Brazil and Mexico also have to step up if the chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees is to remain. Environmentalists consider their goals to be insufficiently ambitious. But India of all places, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China, the USA and the EU, is slowing down when it comes to climate neutrality in 2050.
The net zero target is probably “not the solution to the climate crisis”, according to media reports after a ministerial meeting this week. “So we should focus on immediate goals. But the options are still open. “
Net zero means that no more emissions may be emitted than can be absorbed by natural sinks such as forests. Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to take part in the COP, which is one of the reasons why environmentalists have not yet given up hope for an improved climate target from India. India has a lot to offer, it is said, but has so far been reluctant to commit to a long-term international goal.
Environmentalists expect a tailwind from the meeting of the leading 19 industrialized and emerging countries as well as the EU this weekend in Italy. The G20 countries are particularly relevant to achieving the climate target, after all they are responsible for around 75 percent of global emissions.
The Chinese head of state will also only take part in the meeting in Italy virtually. Chancellor Merkel and her likely successor, Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, are arriving from Germany.
India has not yet committed itself to a long-term destination.
(Photo: dpa)
“The G20 countries must finally say goodbye to the financing of coal abroad and commit to the goal of greenhouse gas neutrality by the middle of the century and the 1.5 degree limit,” demands Christoph Bals, Political Director of Germanwatch. That would significantly accelerate the race between states and industry worldwide for a future without greenhouse gases.
2. Ensure climate finance
The second central topic is the promise of the industrialized countries to provide 100 billion US dollars annually for climate protection in poorer countries from 2020 to 2025. This goal will only be achieved three years later than planned.
Representatives from Germany, Canada and Great Britain announced on Monday that they are confident that they will come close to the sum of 100 billion US dollars from private and public sources in 2022 and that they will be reached for the first time in 2023.
This causes frustration in a number of developing countries, which themselves have contributed the least to man-made climate change – and is already considered a mortgage for the meeting in Glasgow. Climate finance is an important component in the “laboriously balanced balance of mutual trust between poorer and richer countries,” says Jan Kowalzig, climate expert at Oxfam.
It is “annoying” that the new timetable does not contain a commitment by the donor countries to make up for the failures in the next few years through higher contributions. Most recently, the OECD reported that in 2019 climate finance amounted to around 80 billion dollars.
No data are yet available for 2020, but it is considered certain that the promise could not be kept. A new target for climate finance must also be decided from 2026, and negotiations on this will start in Glasgow.
3. Finalize the rule book
Some of the technical agreements on the so-called “rule book” for the Paris Agreement that have been outstanding for years are to be cleared. It is about transparency and verifiability when states report to the United Nations Climate Secretariat on their progress in climate protection.
The countries must also agree on a common time frame and not submit and implement new climate plans at different intervals and with different time horizons. Also on the agenda: rules on the so-called Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
It is about an international exchange and crediting mode for greenhouse gas reductions from international climate protection projects. If, for example, investments in climate protection are promoted in countries that do not have sufficient financial resources of their own: which country or which company may offset the emission reductions? The paying country or company? The country where the investment is made?
One thing is clear: there must be no double bookings. The demands on the climate conference are high, disappointments inevitable. Christoph Bals from Germanwatch, who has already attended numerous international climate conferences, weakens the high expectations.
The decade of the implementation of the climate goals must now begin, he says, but “it would be presumptuous to expect that the world will suddenly be on a 1.5 degree path after this conference. That can’t be done. “
More: “Unfortunately, other industrialized nations are lagging behind”: Von der Leyen changes the strategy of EU climate diplomacy