Civil Society Groups Call For A Concerted Political Push For Climate Talks

Share

In a week of record-breaking heatwaves here in Germany, civil society groups excoriate governments for their weak political positions on responding to the climate crisis. The signals emerging from inside negotiating rooms and outside suggest that countries are ready to cave to the short-term interests of a few powerful polluters. They are willing to dismiss the concerns of their citizens who show up in massive numbers at marches, and willfully ignore the large-scale suffering caused by impacts and loss and damage and maintain a business-as-usual attitude.

With the adoption of the landmark IPCC 1.5C Special report last year and the Paris Rulebook at COP24, the direction of travel was clear: escalating rapid and transformative actions to stop emissions and limit dangerous warming to 1.5C within the next decade. What we see so far is woefully inadequate.

It is unconscionable that the relevance of climate science is put under the spotlight by Saudi Arabia and some others at a time when all governments must be responding to the climate emergency and using the IPCC 1.5C Report to plan for a zero-carbon future. It is important that more countries defend the IPCC and are outspoken in their condemnation of those making a concerted effort to undermine the best available science and the Paris Agreement. The discussions on the technical themes have seen uneven progress overall : on Article 6 and market mechanisms, the process towards the review of the Warsaw International Mechanism on loss and damage, common timeframes and in addressing the influence of vested interests in UN talks.

While the UK has enforced a new net-zero law and Denmark has committed to ambitious climate targets this week, the inability of the G20 countries to find agreement on climate change as the leaders’ summit approaches in Japan is an alarming sign of backsliding on previous promises to phase out fossil fuel subsidies

In the next months we call on countries to submit bold and actionable climate plans at the UNSG Climate Summit in September. Contributor countries must come to the Green Climate replenishment meeting later this year with pledges that double on existing individual contributions. A failure to substantially enhance national climate targets and deliver the support to implement them will be seen as a conscious decision to abandon the 1.5C goal.