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“Our ministerial convenings must deliver progress. It is a colossal waste of time and emissions for us to gather, if our intention is merely to reiterate what we already know,” Simon Stiell, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, said at the G20 session on ‘Environment and climate sustainability’ in Chennai.
The G20 was created in the wake of a financial crisis. Since then, its leadership has always been broader than macroeconomic issues - it has addressed issues such as cease fires and nuclear disarmament. And it was at the G20 in China, in 2016, where Premier Xi Jing Ping and President Obama formally announced their countries’ accession to the Paris Agreement.
“The G20 forum has both precedent and obligation to demonstrate leadership on crises and as I laid out in my opening - This is a crisis,” said Stiell, who tweeted his speech.
On fossil fuels
Phasing down fossil fuels is essential and inevitable. On loss and damage, there is a clear expectation that we will deliver on the task the parties set themselves at COP27 – to operationalise the arrangements including the fund,
“We must keep 1.5 [degree celcius] alive, for instance through global 2030 targets on renewables, energy efficiency and economy-wide emission reduction targets, covering all greenhouse gases. We need a strong outcome on the global goal on adaptation, on which much remains to be done, is expected,” in said in his keynote speech.
This month we have experienced the highest global temperature on record. Heat waves in North America, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, China. Wildfires, drought, torrential rains in India and South Korea. Extreme heat in the Antarctic and the oceans. This is climate chaos.
Stiell suggested that there should be a tangible movement on climate finance, which is essential to all other workstreams. As a bare minimum, a demonstration of progress on the $100 billion, the doubling of adaptation finance by 2025 and a strong Green Climate Fund replenishment. “We must go much further to enable the scale of action we know is necessary,” he said.
Reforming multilateral development banks and other institutions is necessary to create a global financial architecture fit for purpose to deliver climate action. And that we need a just transition.
“As custodian of the Paris Agreement, I must speak truth to power. You are collectively not doing what you signed up to do. Geopolitical tensions have thwarted our efforts, demonstrating that we are collectively unwilling to pull the levers at our disposal, namely, the transition away from fossil fuels, the funding required to do so, and the support to all that are already struggling to adapt to a 1.1 degree world, let alone a 1.5 one, or heaven forbid a 2.5 degree one.
“Climate action cannot happen without secure, accessible and sufficient finance. Those around the room who provide it, that provision of proper support is an essential responsibility, without which you become a blocker of the actions required to address the crisis. In addition, those around the room, obstructing the signals necessary to instruct markets and generate momentum on the transition of the energy system, you are blocking the actions required to address the crisis.
“We should be able to come out of this meeting with a strong communique – one which covers all relevant issues to the climate crisis. That includes how we will tackle the problem through the energy transition and how climate action can be funded,” he said.
Renewable energy capacity
Dr. Sultan al Jaber is COP28 President-Designate and UAE’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, said the call for a global target of tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030 has yet to find expression in G20 outcomes. The G20 represents 85 per cent of the world’s GDP and 80 per cent of the world’s emissions.
There is still time for the G20 to show leadership, and I am calling on all of you to work with your leaders to drive global climate action in this critical decade,” he said.
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