Internationale Klimapolitik

In June 2018, the European Commission installed a Technical Expert Group to develop a classification for sustainable finance. That human rights considerations are almost entirely absent from the group’s mandate considerably weakens the current approach, criticises Germanwatch alongside other pressure groups.

In the trial of the Peruvian mountain guide Saúl Luciano Lliuya against the energy company RWE before the Higher Regional Court of Hamm, the court has now announced that it will select the experts for the taking of evidence itself.

Together with more than 50 international NGO Germanwatch urges the central bank of the G20 states to set an example by disclosing climate related risks.

Applications are now open for the three-day training, where former US Vice President and Climate Reality Founder and Chairman Al Gore will train people from around the world to become Climate Reality Leaders and take action to address the climate crisis. This will be the first such training in Europe since 2013. The training offers the chance to learn directly from Al Gore and a lineup of renowned climate scientists and communicators on how to inspire action and lead their communities in fighting for a sustainable future powered by clean energy.

Loss and damage (L&D) due to climate change impacts is already a reality for many people, especially the most vulnerable. So far, there is no prospect of sufficient financial support for dealing with actual L&D within the climate regime (UNFCCC). Where international climate diplomacy doesn’t advance, affected people start to take the legal avenue to address the problem of L&D. Based on this assessment, this paper analyses the status quo of international climate change litigation, revealing how the current court cases are turning an abstract risk of climate claims into a concrete one.

The role sustainable lifestyles can play in achieving a paradigm shift towards sustainability is acknowledged in both the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement of 2015. They are essential complements to technology and policy solutions, which alone cannot bring the necessary changes. Sustainable lifestyles are emerging in entirely different socio-economic and cultural circumstances in India and Germany. This paper contains first findings from a joint project on sustainable lifestyles conducted by Germanwatch and Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA) India.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) has the ambition to become the most important multilateral instrument in climate finance. Africa has become a focus region for the GCF early on. As it is unlikely that the intended paradigm shift towards low-carbon emissions and climate-resilient economies and societies (GCF founding mandate) can be achieved without broad civil society (CS) engagement, it is essential to scale-up existing civil society capacities to advocate for ambitious proposals, bring on-the-ground expertise to the table, help embed GCF-funded activities in a broader societal support for transformation and increase accountability of national authorities.

The Green Climate Fund has made significant progress in terms of supporting low-carbon and climate resilient development in developing countries. Yet the Fund still has to work on some of the gaps and challenges that have manifested throughout the first phase of operationalization. An overview of the key tasks for 2018.

The decision announced today by the Higher Regional Court Hamm (Germany) to enter into the evidentiary stage in the case of Saúl Luciano Lliuya against the german utility RWE is of great legal relevance. It is the first time that a court acknowledged that a private company is in principal responsible for its share in causing climate damages. This applies if concrete damages or risks for private persons or their property can partly be assigned to the activities of the relevant company.

While the ongoing Fijian COP23 in Bonn and the coalition negotiations in Berlin capture media and public attention, Germany quietly released a self-review of their own fossil fuel subsidies as part of the G20 peer review process. The G20 fossil fuel subsidy review, pioneered in 2016 by US and China, is currently the only concrete step to make progress on the group's pledge from the 2009 summit in Pittsburgh to phase-out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that increase wasteful consumption”.