Berlin The signs for the World Climate Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, are not good. Heat waves, droughts and floods as a result of climate change are already threatening the livelihoods of many millions of people. At the same time, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis are creating massive geopolitical tensions.
Longtime observers are concerned. “The international community must show that, despite all the tensions, it is moving closer together on the task of surviving the climate,” said Christoph Bals, political director of the environmental and development organization Germanwatch, before the start of the two-week marathon of negotiations. “Germany and all countries must use the high fossil energy prices to accelerate the energy transition.”
The commitments made by countries to date in terms of climate protection fall far short of what would be necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The world community has agreed on this goal. But currently it is heading for a warming of 2.5 degrees. This is shown by figures from the United Nations Environment Program.
“Humanity is heading for an abyss,” said Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens). “With devastating effects on the only planet we have.” 1.5 degrees is considered the upper limit to avert the consequences of climate change that are no longer considered manageable. But the damage caused by climate change is already increasing worldwide. So every tenth of a degree matters.
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What the participants at the climate conference, called COP (Conference of the Parties) for short, are struggling with until November 18th:
1. Raise ambitions
Will more countries tighten their climate targets? This question is central in Egypt. Contrary to what was promised at the last climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, only 23 states out of a total of more than 190 had presented new, but unambitious national climate targets until shortly before the start of this year’s meeting.
Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions are not only too high, they continue to rise. To date, the global average temperature has risen by a good 1.1 degrees.
But the international negotiations are overshadowed by the Russian war of aggression and its geopolitical consequences. “The attack on the rules of the world community has led to uncertainty, division, and a loss of trust everywhere, which does not make it easier to unite the whole world behind the common goal,” said Baerbock.
As every year, the focus is on the world’s largest emitters such as China and the USA. In 2015 they were celebrated for having decisively advanced the Paris climate protection agreement. Under ex-President Donald Trump, the United States failed to set the pace, which in turn slowed down China’s ambitions.
With US President Joe Biden, the US is once again a serious partner in international climate diplomacy. Biden’s government is directing investments in more climate-friendly industrial production with a multi-billion dollar subsidy program.
>> Read here: The USA is making the “biggest investment of all time” for the climate – and triggering fears in Europe
Experts are now calling for China to step up its efforts. Germanwatch points out that without more efforts in the country, the goals of the Paris Agreement are unattainable. China must start reducing emissions by 2025 at the latest. So far, however, the country has only committed to peaking emissions “before 2030”.
However, the United States and China will hardly set the pace this year. Due to the tensions surrounding Taiwan, the regular climate policy exchange between the two countries was put on hold.
The tensions with Russia, after all the fourth largest emitter in the world, are considered a burden for the negotiations, but the country should not be ostracized in Sharm el-Sheikh. In Egypt, it is not about negotiations between individual states, said UN diplomat Achim Steiner in an interview with the Handelsblatt. “The war must not affect the negotiations in such a way that a common path cannot be found.”
2. Secure climate finance
The industrialized countries have broken their funding promise to support developing countries annually with 100 billion US dollars in climate protection and adaptation from 2020. In 2020, the aid amounted to around 80 billion US dollars. It is still unclear whether the 100 billion dollars will be reached in 2022 or only in 2023.
Climate protectors like David Ryfisch, head of the international climate policy team at Germanwatch, criticize this. “It is hard to convey that industrialized countries can respond to the pandemic and the effects of Russian aggression with triple-digit billion packages, but not 100 billion together for the poorest and most vulnerable to tackle the climate crisis.”
Wolfgang Obergassel, co-head of the International Climate Policy research department at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, expressed the hope that “the industrialized countries will make up for their failure to provide financial support”. From his point of view, they would have to promise that at least on average from 2020 to 2025 it would be 100 billion annually.
>> Read here: “The geopolitical tensions are a heavy burden,” said UN diplomat Steiner in an interview
The focus is also on the topic of climate-related damage and losses. This refers to the consequences of climate change to which states can no longer adapt.
Here, too, climate protectionists believe that the industrialized countries have a duty. After all, wealthy countries have been the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions for years, which are now causing billions of euros in damage to developing countries.
Foreign Minister Baerbock announced solidarity with the affected countries. Germany “is ready to do this, both in climate finance and in dealing with damage and losses”.
However, a breakthrough is not to be expected in Egypt. Discussions about setting up a fund to deal with damage and losses have been raging for years. Many decision-makers fear a wave of lawsuits from particularly affected countries.
3. Promote partnership projects
Great expectations are placed on so-called energy or climate partnerships between industrialized and developing countries. They are intended to help energy-hungry, up-and-coming countries to use more climate-friendly energy sources.
Niklas Höhne, Managing Director of the New Climate Institute in Cologne, explained that he hopes “that individual countries will come together bilaterally or in smaller groups on very ambitious things and say: We will implement this on the one hand and we will finance it on the other Side”.
According to statements by Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens), movement is to be expected here. “The World Climate Conference offers the right forum for this,” he said at the start of the conference.
Germany and Peru agreed on a climate partnership on Friday, the first between Germany and a Latin American country. A partnership between the EU, the USA and Great Britain and South Africa, which was concluded at the last climate conference in Glasgow, is also considered to be exemplary. The industrialized countries are promoting the phase-out of coal-fired power generation.
More: “In the US there is money to invest – in Europe there are laws and regulations”