UN climate official criticizes G20 approaches – 06/09/2023 – Environment

The declarations of the countries of the G20 on the fight against climate change are “regretfully inadequate” to the situation, affirmed this Wednesday (6) the head of the UN for climatic questions, ahead of the summit this weekend in India.

The G20, which accounts for around 85% of the world’s economy and greenhouse gas emissions, is meeting this weekend in New Delhi. The group is chaired by Brazil for the first time.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend amid tensions over the Ukraine War, the phase-out of fossil fuels and trade issues.

For Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, its acronym in English), technological solutions are within our reach to contain global warming. But geopolitics is a “limiting factor”, he told AFP at the African Climate Summit.

At this meeting held in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, African leaders called for a substantial increase in investment in renewable energy on the continent, a reform of the international financial system and greater support for developing countries, the most affected.

The G20 summit is part of a four-month cycle of major negotiations on global warming, culminating in a UN conference, COP28, in Dubai in November.

For Stiell, the declarations of the G20 countries on the eve of the meeting are not up to the problem. “The communiques issued are woefully inadequate and do not address the critical issues facing these 20 countries,” she laments. “There are still attempts to circumvent and obstruct these essential issues”, he ponders.

In July, the G20 energy ministers failed to reach a consensus on an alternative to phasing out the use of fossil fuels.

The G20 summit in India will be held as countries await the first official balance sheets on their progress against the targets set in Paris in 2015.

In the Paris Agreement, around 200 countries pledged to limit global warming to 2°C by 2100, compared to the pre-industrial era, and preferably to 1.5°C.

These balance sheets reiterate many of the disastrous conclusions of several recently published UN climate reports, which point to the insufficiency of the collective response to the problem.

“There is work to be done at all levels”, Stiell points out, emphasizing that “the burden of the response weighs on 20 countries”.

In this sense, the UN official insists that the G20 leaders must reflect on their failures and “send a very strong signal regarding their commitments to climate change”.

UN climate experts say that greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced by 43% this decade. Stiell pointed out that the technology to achieve this goal is at hand, if the richest countries are willing to put the necessary money on the table.