Climate

The Paris climate summit was a remarkable success of climate diplomacy. Vulnerable countries achieved to anchor adaptation, resilience making and addressing loss and damage squarely on the international climate policy agenda of the coming years. This includes among others the creation of a long-term adaptation goal, the linkage of adaptation commitments to manifesting temperature pathways, the inclusion of adaptation in the Paris ratcheting architecture, the strengthening of 'good' adaptation principles, and specific commitments of countries to support, undertake and internationally disclose adaptation actions.

This study offers an analysis of Germany’s relatively new efforts to integrate climate change into its foreign policy agenda, with a focus on its government players at a national level. It is an initial step towards filling in gaps in understanding and deepening the discussion about Germany’s unique climate diplomacy experience. The author concludes that in some areas, such as the G7, German climate diplomacy has been surprisingly effective, while in other areas it has made less progress, including fostering EU level climate diplomacy and engaging with foreign non-governmental players.

For many developing countries ensuring food security remains a key development challenge, often aggravated by climate change impacts.

The international year of 2015 saw an unparalleled degree of international decisions and norm creation. The Paris Agreement was a remarkable achievement.

While Paris has been a success in terms of environmental diplomacy and politically acknowledged the risks of climate change especially if global mean temperature exceeds 1.5° C, the current level of domestic targets would result in much higher global warming. This emission gap directly translates into a climate risk gap resulting in loss and damage for people and ecosystems. This is the backdrop against which the Warsaw International Mechanism's performance needs to be compared.

Lisa Junghans, Policy Advisor – Climate Change, Adaptation and Urban Transformation at Germanwatch talks at the Climate & Development Knowledge Network- Website about a recent CDKN-supported publication on financing climate compatible development in cities. The publication is an output of CDKN supported project.

Over December 5-6 at the Palais du Congress, the 3rd Annual Global Landscapes Forum (#GLFCOP21) was the largest other meeting in Paris during COP21, attracting close to 3,500 participants, exhibitors and speakers from across disciplines and sectors. Instead of focusing on national climate commitments, the GLF explored alternative ‘un-siloed’ approaches to land use in a warming world, and perhaps equally important, how to finance them.

[Unauthorised translation of the German original: http://germanwatch.org/de/11433] The conference in Paris has impressively confirmed the growing international consensus that was last demonstrated at the 2015 G7 summit in Germany. Governments around the world are now serious about taking decisive action well before the end of the century to phase out fossil fuels in accordance with the findings of climate science. We welcome the clear commitment made by large industrial countries to undertake the necessary transformation of their energy systems by the middle of the century. This undertaking is now more feasible than ever thanks to declining costs for renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies.

The Climate Change Performance Index is an instrument supposed to enhance transparency in international climate politics. Its aim is to encourage political and social pressure on those countries which have, up to now, failed to take ambitious actions on climate protection as well as to highlight countries with best-practice climate policies. On the basis of standardised criteria, the index evaluates and compares the climate protection performance of 58 countries that are, together, responsible for more than 90 percent of global energy-related CO2 emissions.

The millennium started with a lost decade in terms of climate protection and, as indicated in the eleventh edition of the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), global emissions were still growing in 2013. For 2014, there are signs of a slowdown or even a halt of this trend.