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The devastating impacts of the trade in minerals linked to conflict and human rights abuses are well documented. The problem has not gone away.

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.

This report provides an analysis of REDD+ project standards against expectations and principles set by the BMUB/IKI and Germanwatch. atmosfair contributed to this report with its experience in the field of MRV and climate integrity of offset projects. The goal of the report is to provide a clear underlying guidance for the use of one or several REDD+ standards for use by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the BMUB and beyond.

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.

Serbia, Afghanistan and Bosnia and Herzegovina were the countries most impacted by climatic events in 2014. This is the result of this year’s Global Climate Risk Index, launched today by Germanwatch at the climate summit in Paris. "Heavy rains, flooding and landslides have been the defining hazards of the new Global Climate Risk Index", said Sönke Kreft, author of the study and Team Leader for International Climate Policy at Germanwatch. "Patterns of extreme precipitation is what people and countries will likely face in a warming climate."

The international community has agreed several times that climate change must be limited to below 2°C. Many of the most vulnerable countries demand that this upper limit be tightened to 1.5°C to avoid further negative impacts on their populations. These global temperature limits will likely be included in the Paris Agreement as well. But temperature goals are very abstract. Paris will deliver an agreement – but emission reductions have to be realized on national, subnational, local and private levels...