According to Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, the rich countries will for the first time keep their promise of billions in financial support for poorer countries in climate protection this year.
“The good news is: As it looks now, we are on the way to finally reaching the sum of 100 billion US dollars this year,” said the Green politician at the Petersberg climate dialogue in Berlin.
In Copenhagen in 2009, the industrialized countries had promised to mobilize 100 billion US dollars annually from public and private sources for climate protection in developing countries by the year 2020, which has not yet been achieved. Germany has already pledged to increase its own contribution to international climate finance to at least six billion euros, said Baerbock. But massive private funds are also needed, which is why Germany is working with the USA to reform the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
“Biggest security challenge of our time”
Baerbock emphasized the existence-threatening effects of climate change on some countries and stated: “For all of us, this crisis is the greatest security challenge of our time.” At the climate dialogue in Berlin, representatives from more than 40 countries are preparing for the world climate conference that will take place in Dubai at the end of the year. The goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times is considered increasingly unrealistic in view of previous climate protection efforts.
In Berlin, the designated President of the climate conference in Dubai, Ahmed al-Dschaber, committed himself to the rapid expansion of renewable energies worldwide. “We will accelerate implementation in areas such as renewables, which need to triple capacity by 2030 and double again by 2040,” the sultan said. They want to support smart regulation to promote hydrogen and enable the commercial storage of climate-damaging carbon dioxide.
Al-Dschaber is Industry Minister of the United Arab Emirates and also head of the state oil company Adnoc, which climate protection critics criticize. However, in 2006 he also founded and managed the Abu Dhabi-based state-owned Masdar renewable energy company, which has helped launch wind and solar projects in more than 40 countries.
800 million people have no access to energy
Al-Dschaber warned that the poorest countries in particular would not be able to change course without financial support. “The poorest countries make up more than half of the world’s population but contribute only 12 percent of global emissions, while 800 million people have no access to energy.” These people wanted and deserved a better life. If the world does not succeed in financially supporting these people in terms of climate protection, they would have no choice but to develop in the direction of high CO2 emissions. “It’s a result we want to avoid because it’s in nobody’s interest.”
At the conference in Dubai, the world community is to take stock of their previous climate protection efforts and measure them against the goals agreed at the 2015 Paris climate conference. “This is a moment of clarity that we must all face with complete honesty,” Al-Dschaber said.
“Today, delay means only one thing: destruction”
The executive director of Greenpeace Germany, Martin Kaiser, said that if Baerbock and Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) wanted to make the upcoming climate conference a success, they would have to make it clear right now that the burning of oil and gas there had to stop. “A softening of this overdue announcement by the host Gulf state must be prevented in order to stay within the 1.5-degree limit.”
The climate activist Luisa Neubauer urged the participants at the Petersberg Dialogue to act. “Today, delay means only one thing: destruction,” she said after a transcript of her private speech provided by Fridays for Future. Objections that radical climate protection measures are not realistic were countered by Neubauer: “It is not realistic to live in peaceful democracies when livelihoods are falling. It is not realistic for national economies to develop anywhere when the world is on fire.”
