Journalisten

Africa is the continent that was hit hardest by extreme weather events in 2015. According to the 12th edition of the Global Climate Risk Index, four out of the ten most impacted countries globally are African: Mozambique (Rank 1), Malawi (Rank 3), Ghana and Madagascar (both Rank 8). "Especially flooding affected the hosting continent of this year's climate summit", says Germanwatch's Sönke Kreft, main author of the Index. Heat waves claimed most lives last year. More than 4,300 deaths in India and more than 3,300 deaths in France show that both developing and developed countries are impacted by extraordinary temperatures. Kreft: "Increases in heavy precipitation, flooding and heatwaves are to be expected in a warming world."

The report, “Brown to Green: Assessing the G20 transition to a low-carbon economy” has been produced by Climate Transparency, and written by a range of international experts and was launched at a press conference in Beijing. With climate change high on this year’s G20 agenda, along with green finance, the assessment looks at a range of indicators on climate action, including investment attractiveness, investment in renewable energy, climate policy, the carbon intensity of both the energy and electricity sectors of the G20 economies, of their fossil fuel subsidies and their contributions to climate finance.

The landmark Paris Agreement and the Agenda 2030 provide a new framework for global decarbonization and sustainable, climate-resilient development. Multilateral bodies like the G20 provide a natural focus point for governments of the leading industrial nations and emerging economies to take common action towards the achievement of these global goals. The mobilization of finance for sustainable investment, in particular the transition to a renewable energy system, is one of the most urgent but also promising tasks ahead.

This background paper explores the potential relevance within a pluralistic society of the important encyclical Laudato Si’ issued by Pope Francis in June 2015. It considers whether the encyclical documents a reflected faith that accepts the primacy of science in secular knowledge as well as the primacy of democratically elected governments, human dignity, and human rights in the political sphere. Laudato Si’ presents a paradigm shift from the image of the dominion of mankind over the rest of creation to universal fraternity with even weak and marginalised people as well as fellow beings threatened with mass extinction.

The 2015 G7 Summit at Schloss Elmau was ground-breaking in that G7 leaders for the first time discussed such supply chain responsibility. They pledged to promote “responsible supply chains”, and strongly supported the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). The G7 leaders also stressed the need to increase transparency, the identification and prevention of human rights risks, and the strengthening of grievance mechanisms to promote better working conditions, and urged the private sector to implement human rights due diligence. These commitments were made under the leadership of Japan and Germany, as current and preceding G7 chair.

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."