The most important industrial and emerging countries want to commit to their climate goals at the G20 summit in Rome. In the final declaration of the summit in Rome, according to information from various news agencies, it was underlined that they wanted to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees compared to the pre-industrial age. On the other hand, it remained unclear what specific measures the G-20 group intends to take to achieve these goals. At least international public funding for new coal-fired power plants should end by the end of the year. The G-20 want to help developing countries to get out of coal technology “as soon as possible”.
A recent draft of the final declaration had watered down the originally intended targets and concrete commitments. There was not even an agreement on “immediate action”, as stated in an earlier text. There has also been no progress on carbon neutrality. If the target date was originally 2050, the draft spoke more generally of “middle of the century”. Activists had actually hoped for a “strong signal” from the G-20 for the world climate conference, which began on Sunday in the Scottish city of Glasgow. A number of G-20 states want to make commitments on new national climate targets only there.
At the G20 summit, the states also underline the goal of providing developing countries with $ 100 billion a year by 2025. During this decade, work must be done to sharpen the national climate protection targets. The G-20 chief negotiators, the so-called Sherpas, had been negotiating the declaration all night. The climate debates in the G20 framework are considered particularly difficult because the group includes countries as diverse as Japan, China, the USA, Saudi Arabia and the EU states.
The group of economic powers plays an important role because it is responsible for around 80 percent of global greenhouse gases. Climate expert Jan Kowalzig from the non-governmental organization Oxfam was not impressed by the G20’s declaration. It is “no progress compared to Paris”. An implementation of the 1.5 degree target also requires an “immediate improvement of the recently revised, but overall still far too weak climate targets of the countries under the agreement”.