The discussions at the event veered around global renewables target, climate finance and Global Stocktake
Photo: @COP28_UAE / Twitter The Petersberg Dialogue on Climate Change was held in Berlin from May 2-3, 2023. It was hosted by Germany and the United Arab Emirates, which is hosting the 28th Conference of Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Ministers from 40 countries attended the conference to discuss the way forward towards COP28. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, COP28 President-Designate Sultan Al Jaber and Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley spoke at the inaugural address.
In a video message, Guterres emphasised the need for “cleaning-up our economies — breaking our fossil fuel addiction and driving decarbonisation in every sector” to achieve a 1.5 degree global warming pathway.
He also reiterated his earlier call for an Acceleration Agenda, where “all countries hit fast-forward on their Net Zero deadlines”. The Agenda calls for coal phaseout by 2030 in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, and by 2040 in all others, as well as achieving Net Zero electricity generation and decarbonising major sectors.
Some of the other highlights from the summit are as follows:
Speaking at the inaugural address, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that in order to limit global warming to 1.5°C, the world needs to make sharp cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions. She also initiated discussions around a potential global target for renewables at the next climate conference.
“Within the G7, we have set ourselves concrete targets for expanding wind and solar energy, and I am working to ensure that we can agree on a global target for renewables and energy efficiency,” she said. The G7 consists of Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
COP28 President-Designate Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber called on meeting participants to ramp up renewable energy capacity building. “We must be laser focused on phasing out fossil fuel emissions, while phasing up viable, affordable zero-carbon alternatives,” he said.
He called for a tripling of renewable energy capacity by 2030 followed by a doubling in 2040, but his address focused on reducing fossil fuel ‘emissions’. He was tight-lipped about the phaseout of fossil fuels.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during the inaugural address at Berlin said that developed countries are “on good track” to deliver the $100 billion per year they had promised to mobilise by 2020 during the COP15 in 2009.
Although this is good news, delivering the $100 billion goal in 2023 might be too little too late. The $100 billion is likely to be a gross underestimation of the true need for climate finance in developing countries. A recent estimate pegs climate finance needs at $1 trillion per year by 2030 for emerging markets alone. This means that climate finance needs are more than 10 times the amount that developed countries have been able to mobilise, 14 years after committing to the $100 billion figure.
Although the $100 billion pledge might have been met this year, the needs have now escalated. This underlines the urgent need for financial reparations.
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley attended the meetings online and addressed meeting participants during the inaugural address. She underlined the need for an urgent global financial systems transformation so that crucial climate finance can be unlocked for the most climate vulnerable countries in the world.
“The burden of whether we can keep global temperatures from rising much beyond the 1.5 degrees of warming cannot fall on the poorest countries — those who are least responsible for the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Even beyond the unquestionable moral case, that transition is the most expensive in the poorest countries,” she said.
2023 is the year for the Global Stocktake, which is essentially a periodic review of global climate action which aims to assess whether current efforts will enable us to reach the objectives set out in the Paris Agreement.
This is the first Global Stocktake year since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 and the report has been underway for the past two years. It is set to be released in September of 2023.
“The Global Stocktake outcome should focus on how climate change impacts, actions and responses have a bearing on the developmental priorities of developing countries including eradication of poverty,” said Bhupender Yadav, Union Minister for the Indian Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue.
He also added that the outcome of the first Global Stocktake should seek to convey a message on sustainable lifestyles as well as sustainable consumption to inform the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions and enhanced international cooperation.
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