In the end, it is the children who give the climate conference the final pressure. The delegate from Tuvalu, for example, holds up his smartphone, it shows a photo of his three grandchildren. “Every evening when I get home I look at this photo,” he says. “And I wonder what to tell them.” The Turkish delegate spoke up and said: “I owe my three boys the success.” This is how it goes in the final hours of the Glasgow Climate Change Conference. And in the end she will decide on her package, the “Glasgow Climate Pact”. Albeit with a slight weakening.
Because in the last few hours – one day after the regularly scheduled end of the World Climate Conference – the states were arguing above all about phasing out coal. The original draft had called for more work in this direction, but India – and then China – went too far. The withdrawal from coal became its slow “shutdown”, and a “phase-out” became a “phase down”. A disappointment for many countries – but nevertheless the international community is for the first time personally naming the biggest culprit: coal. It was “a historic moment”, said the acting Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD). “It is now clear that we are getting out of the coal.”
The final declaration is not lacking in clarity, at least as far as the description of the problem is concerned. The states express their concern that the earth has warmed up by 1.1 degrees Celsius since the beginning of industrialization. “Rapid, deep and sustainable” steps are necessary to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To do this, emissions would have to fall 45 percent below the 2010 level by 2030. Until the next world climate conference, which is to take place next year in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, states are to present improved climate plans “where necessary”. According to experts, so far only a few countries have presented climate targets that could actually stop the planet from warming to 1.5 degrees. The states are urged to switch to clean energies and to abolish “inefficient” subsidies for fossil energies. States should also give more consideration to the fight against climate-damaging gases such as methane.
Long dispute between those who caused it and those who suffered from climate change
The resolutions are a compromise, said UN Secretary General António Guterres. “They reflect the interests, the conditions, the contradictions – and the state of political will in the world.” Unfortunately, however, the collective will is not enough to overcome some deep contradictions. “It’s emergency mode time,” said Guterres.
Before that, the states had long argued about the balance between those who caused and those who suffered from climate change. Poorer countries and island states demanded binding commitments, for example on financial aid to cushion the effects of climate change. The funds for this are now to be doubled by 2025. As for the commitment to raise more than $ 100 billion annually in climate aid for developing countries from 2025 onwards, the industrialized nations have remained vague.
Developing countries in particular are hard hit by climate change. However, they have been in dispute with the industrialized countries for years about how specific damage and losses can be compensated for. This conflict also overshadowed the final hours of the conference. However, they could not agree on a mechanism for how the states would deal with it. “As far as that is concerned, these negotiations have largely failed,” says Christoph Bals, who attended the summit for the environmental organization Germanwatch. “That was only postponed to further conferences without those affected being able to hope for concrete help.”
The nearly 200 states were able to resolve other open points. So they agreed on the guard rails of a new climate protection market. It should allow states to cooperate more closely – for example, in that country A pays for projects in country B and can have emission rights credited for them. This, too, was one of the great points of contention. If the mechanism is poorly designed, it can open the door to abuse. However, significant loopholes have been closed, such as the accounting for forests or double counting of reductions in countries A and B. However, the final details will not be clarified until the climate conference next year.
Voluntary initiatives for joint renovation come to the fore
The rules for reporting reductions are also now in place so that it is even possible to understand what the states have actually achieved; and a number of other details. With that the operating system of the Paris Climate Agreement is finished. Now it just has to work, in other words: Lower emissions in a constant interplay of national commitments and the monitoring of their effectiveness – until, as the Glasgow agreement also states, the world does not cause more emissions than around the middle of the century let yourself be withdrawn from the atmosphere.
This means that voluntary initiatives with which states are jointly pushing ahead with the restructuring are coming to the fore. And Glasgow has seen plenty of such agreements, for example to reduce methane emissions, to phase out coal, to end funding for foreign fossil fuel projects, to fight deforestation. These are all important signals that the age of fossil fuels is drawing to a close, says Jan Kowalzig from the development organization Oxfam. “But you mustn’t hide the fact that we can only get the climate crisis under control if governments translate such initiatives into tightening their climate protection goals.”