COP26
Climate conference enters hot phase – focus on financing
According to previous plans, the world climate conference is due to end on Friday. Photo: Christoph Soeder / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Most of the tens of thousands of demonstrators who marched through Glasgow over the weekend for more climate protection were angry and disappointed. The second, crucial week of the conference is now dawning.
After the major demonstrations in Glasgow for more climate protection, the World Climate Conference starts its second, crucial week.
Numerous ministers and heads of government will travel to Scotland on Monday to give momentum to the negotiations of the around 200 represented states. Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze will not join until the end of the week, the SPD politician is involved in the negotiations on a coalition of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP in the federal government.
The responsibility rests with industrialized nations
At the mammoth meeting in Glasgow with almost 30,000 delegates, the sensitive issue of money is on the agenda today. Poor states, which are already suffering from droughts, floods and rising sea levels because of accelerated global warming, insist on compensation from the rich industrialized countries. However, they have been reacting cautiously for years – also because they fear lawsuits for reparations in court.
Nevertheless, the British government expressly called on the rich industrialized countries to provide more funds before 2030 in the fight against the looming climate catastrophe. “We must act now to prevent climate change from plunging more and more people into poverty,” said Trade Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who was due to lead talks on appropriate financial commitments in Glasgow today.
Funding is one of the most contentious issues in the climate negotiations. For example, the industrialized countries have already admitted that they will probably only meet their pledge of 100 billion US dollars per year for countries particularly affected by climate change in full for the first time three years later, specifically in 2023.
Guterres: “The sirens are howling”
Halfway through the conference, Prime Minister Boris Johnson – host of the summit in Scotland – had asked for further commitments and more willingness to compromise on the part of the states. It is about the common goal set in Paris in 2015 to curb global warming to a tolerable 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times.
UN Secretary General António Guterres called for a solution. “The sirens are howling,” he tweeted early that morning. «Our planet tells us something, just like people everywhere. We have to listen, we have to act and we have to choose wisely ». This decision must be made for the protection of the future and the salvation of mankind.
Demos all over the world – Merkel shows understanding
On Friday and over the weekend tens of thousands of people in Glasgow, the whole of Great Britain and many other countries vented their displeasure with climate protection that had been delayed for decades and called for more climate justice. The world’s best-known activist, the Swede Greta Thunberg, castigated inaction and “blah blah blah” of the major economies. The COP26 conference is already a failure. According to previous plans, the summit should end on Friday.
The outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel considers the protests of young people to be justified. “Glasgow has already brought some results, but from the perspective of young people it is still justifiably too slow,” said the CDU politician in an interview with Deutsche Welle.
The international community has always done a lot for climate protection, but the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have “become more and more warning and more and more threatening”. “And then I tell the young people that they have to put pressure on and we have to get faster,” stressed Merkel. It is true that one has become faster. “But it has never been the case that the distance to the scientific assessments has not grown again. And that has to change now in this decade. We have to follow the scientific assessments again: And that just means staying very close to 1.5 degrees global warming. “
Criticism of Saudi Arabia
Yesterday, environmentalists accused the oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia of wanting to block negotiations. Government representatives from Riyadh opposed ambitious formulations on climate protection in the planned final declaration late on Friday evening, complained Greenpeace boss Jennifer Morgan. The Saudi Arabian delegation also blocked decisions in order to make progress on the subject of adaptation to the consequences of global warming. Morgan said that such strategic maneuvers by the authoritarian state were “cynical” but fairly well known.
Meanwhile, the US government of President Joe Biden called on China, the largest producer of fossil CO2 emissions, to step up efforts to protect the climate. “We expect China to take responsibility for the climate,” said the National Security Advisor to the White House, Jake Sullivan, the broadcaster CNN. The USA is the world’s largest economy and – after China – the second largest producer of CO2 emissions.