Hamburg (8 July 2017). In Hamburg, 19 heads of government from the largest economies jointly reaffirmed their commitment to the swift implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement and rejected US President Trump's attempt to undermine the Paris Agreement.
According to the leaked results, the final declaration sets out the differences between the USA and the other 19 partners on climate protection. The 19 emphasise the irreversibility of the agreement, commit to rapid implementation and adopt a detailed climate and energy action plan. "The action plan is the most concrete result on climate policy that the G20 has ever produced," explains Christoph Bals, Political Director of Germanwatch. "It shows that it is no longer just about reaffirming the Paris Agreement, but about taking steps to implement it."
In the document, the 18 states plus the EU emphasise, among other things, the importance of long-term climate protection strategies, which are to be presented by 2020. They commit to aligning development aid and infrastructure investments with climate targets and specify steps that can be taken to encourage companies and investors to disclose their climate strategies. Bals: "We welcome the fact that the 19 partners are also recognising their responsibility for the poor and those particularly vulnerable to climate change and are launching a global partnership for financing and climate insurance solutions."
The US government's attempt to obtain a free pass for fossil fuel exports was curbed as the US accepted the UN's global Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for the energy transformation in the joint section of the G20. "This means they accept that the share of renewable energies will grow substantially by 2030 and that the pace of energy efficiency improvements will double," explains Bals.
Chancellor Merkel is criticised. She cannot "put the phase-out of coal, oil and gas on the international agenda by the middle of the century and refuse a plan at home for the rapid, socially acceptable phase-out of coal," emphasises Bals. "It cannot push ahead with plans to accelerate the international climate transition and at the same time have no strategy in Germany for the transport sector, which still has emissions as high today as they were in 1990."
The complete press release:
http://germanwatch.org/de/14097
Keywords: Stakeholders, Climate protection, News Blog Europe (without DE), SDG 2030, Environmental policy, Ecology
