In Sharm el-Sheikh, the political temperature is rising: With the start of the second week, things are getting serious. Whether COP27 will be a success or not depends primarily on money. The most vulnerable countries want security quickly via a fixed financing facility. However, EU delegation leader Dusík immediately dampens expectations, as Lukas Scheid reports.
This is part of the political theater of a COP: sweeping demands followed by back-pedaling, hoping to meet somewhere near the middle. But why are the negotiators gambling when quick actions are so sorely needed? Because even they partially barely understand just how urgent it actually is, according to one of the leading scientific experts interviewed by Bernhard Pötter. “Many negotiators are not familiar with the latest research,” according to Johan Rockström, co-director of PIK. He warns: “The physics behind climate change is not negotiable.”
Here’s to an exciting and decisive week!
Mr. Rockström, you once again present the bitter data on the climate crisis to politicians and negotiators at COP. The data gets worse every year. Does that make you feel like a broken record?
Not like a broken record. But it definitely has elements of frustration. And it takes enormous patience. Before each COP, we consider to what extent participation by PIK researchers can be purposeful. After all, there are different formats: We sit on panels with politicians and negotiators, we brief them one-on-one, we do public outreach, and we meet people informally. Here I have met the UNFCCC president, the negotiators from the Nordic countries and Germany, Barbados, Seychelles, again and again, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), and G77 negotiators and many decision-makers from the business community.
What do politicians want to know when they talk to you?
It varies a lot. It often has to do with the CO2 budget or net zero targets and weather extremes or tipping points in the Earth system. But they often ask things that we as natural scientists don’t do research on: finance, for example, or questions of global justice.
Do the politicians and delegates at COP understand what this is all about?
After all these years, I have to say: Many negotiators are not familiar with the latest science; they are on a different level than the researchers. They are professional foreign policymakers and diplomats. But they often have little to do with risk analyses.
So the negotiators don’t understand what they are actually negotiating?
It’s getting better. But some negotiators at COPs think they can deal with scientific facts as if you could negotiate with physics.
What do you mean specifically?
Many negotiators understand that we have a problem. But they can’t always comprehend the degree of urgency and complexity. First and foremost, the time issue is a major challenge. This crisis is developing slowly, and at the same time, we need to intervene very quickly. Deciding whether to cross tipping points may be necessary very quickly, but the effects may not come for 100 years or even more.
What’s so hard to understand about that?
There are two different times: one for action and another for the consequences of that action. Politics and business only care about the consequences: When will the storm hit? But the time for decision and action is also relevant: When do you condemn all future generations of the world to a long-term ten meters higher sea level? If that’s dependent on our emissions in, say, 2030, then that’s very, very urgent. But if it’s clear that the ten meters might not actually happen until 2600, then you just write that off today and nobody cares. And that’s what we often see at these conferences: serious mistakes by politicians, economists, and negotiating teams in trying to match the consequences that will only become apparent over time with urgent decisions.
Have you developed tricks for teaching decision-makers anyway?
We have different approaches. For example, we now have a scientific paper evaluating how to deal with these time scales in communication. And there is good news: In 2017, we established the Carbon Law: Every decade, emissions must be cut in half to keep the Paris Agreement. Today, the Science-based Targets Initiative has adopted this law. Translating the findings into the 2 and 1.5 degree limits is another such example of making complex science actionable. That leads to a residual budget, and you can divide that up. That’s the kind of thing that policymakers can deal with. But still, not enough is happening.
Do you reason on a personal or moral level? Do you talk to the negotiators about the fate of their children and grandchildren?
I’m not asking these questions, but maybe I should. But sometimes, it comes up, especially since Fridays for Future has grown. There are 55 youth delegates here now, after all.
Do we still need more science on climate? Isn’t everything clear and said?
We have known enough for years to be able to act. New research, for example, into some elements in the Earth system, is enabling us to better determine the thresholds at which they can start to tip over, and of course we are also researching solutions to the climate problem. If our voices from the scientific community are getting louder, it’s mainly because we’re running out of time.
But people apparently don’t listen until their house floods.
Yes, it is terrible that no action is being taken. But if we didn’t have this patient detailed work of the IPCC over decades, there would be no action at all on climate protection.
Are there also meetings that give you hope?
That happens now and then, certainly not every time. Talking to senior business leaders, for example, at the World Economic Forum, gives me hope because they can drive change directly in their entrepreneurial actions.
Is it easier to talk about the climate with CEOs than with climate negotiators? But managers think in even shorter cycles.
No, many of them don’t. They want long-term security in the markets. We briefed the European truck manufacturers at PIK some time ago. After that, they collectively decided to phase out the internal combustion engine in 2040. They said: If we have to be at zero by 2050, we have to end internal combustion engines ten years before that.
What do you do to avoid becoming cynical in the business?
Never give up. I am stubborn. But despair and the end of the world are not on my daily agenda. Because I also love my work as an academic. My greatest joy this week was the news that we can revisit a study on planetary boundaries at a review. I love teaching and running an institute. We advance the state of knowledge and make that knowledge available to all. That’s our mission.
The euphoria over the new agenda item “loss and damage” has long since faded. After a week of sometimes tough negotiations, disillusionment has now set in at COP27. The negotiating teams are glad that they are now getting a new dynamic with the arrival of the ministers.
In the second week of COP, the following issues will dominate the debate:
New momentum is needed above all in the financing of loss and damage, because the fronts are increasingly hardened. The Global South continues to call for a compensation mechanism for loss and damage in the most vulnerable countries as quickly as possible. For the Europeans, however, it is now out of the question that this will be set up or decided in principle as early as Sharm el-Sheikh.
Particularly controversial is the question of whether such financial flows will be organized within existing instruments, such as the Green Climate Fund – or whether a separate structure (facility) will be set up. This is a political question that ministers must clarify, says Jacob Werksman, chief negotiator for the EU Commission. For the time being, Germany and the EU only want to push ahead with the further process of financing “loss and damage,” they say, in other words, to clarify details: When is there to be a decision, in what format will negotiations take place, how will losses and damage be recorded?
The person responsible for defining this process is Jennifer Morgan, Climate Commissioner and State Secretary at the German Foreign Office, but first and foremost, a mediator on loss and damage. Together with her co-mediator, Chilean Environment Minister Maisa Rojas, she will explore the margins between developed and developing countries this week. The negotiating texts for loss and damage funding are still full of staples and controversial options. There’s a lot of nagging detail work waiting.
The most vulnerable countries continue to call for concrete action this year. “What vulnerable countries need is a clear outcome that includes the provision of finance through a separate facility. We cannot pretend that procedural outcomes offer hope,” says Eddie Perez of Climate Action Network (CAN).
The Europeans, on the other hand, are positioning themselves as brakemen in the facility poker game: Jan Dusík, head of the delegation of the Czech Republic and the EU Council Presidency, did not even rule out the possibility that there will still be no agreement at COP28 next year in an interview with Table.Media. He said that it would first be necessary to clarify what scope and function such an instrument would have to have. Only then could one talk about the form of a facility. “Form follows function.” Only a new structure like a facility does not necessarily implement the loss and damage finances effectively. But this is a top priority for the EU, Dusík said.
On the other hand, Europeans are sending signals that they are ready to help: The G7, together with the most vulnerable 20 nations (V20), will present the “Global Shield” at COP on Monday. The shield, designed under the German G7 presidency (Climate.Table reported), is intended to take effect in the event of climate catastrophes and pay for damages. The German government makes 170 million euros available for this purpose. The presentation in Sharm el-Sheikh is supposed to win over further supporting countries.
In addition to financing issues related to loss and damage, other financial topics will accompany the negotiators until the end of COP27, as David Ryfischestimates, team leader for international climate policy at Germanwatch. The New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance aims to find a successor to the 100 billion dollars promised to developing countries from 2020. How much should it now be from 2025?
The developing countries want concrete commitments on sums or, for example, percentage sub-targets for climate adaptation. The industrialized countries are putting on the brakes and would prefer to clarify only formal issues here as well, Ryfisch reports. An open question: Must all funds be compatible with the 1.5-degree target? The EU has not been able to get the issue of how global financial flows must be redirected for the Paris Agreement under Article 2.1c on the agenda. Now it should at least feature prominently in the political “cover decision,” as Europeans wish.
According to Ryfisch, however, the Latin American countries have already presented a compromise. Although there will be no concrete commitments for climate financing after 2025 this year, there will be binding commitments next year. The ministers must now negotiate this at the political level.
In addition, the industrialized nations would like to expand the circle of donor countries in climate financing. That would mean that not only the richest countries in Europe, North America and East Asia would participate in global climate financing, but also those that already cause a large share of greenhouse gas emissions. “In doing so, however, they are hitting a snag with China,” Ryfisch said.
The discussion of whether China is a donor or recipient country for financial support comes up again and again at COP27. “Recognizing one’s own polluter role is the hardest part,” says Susanne Dröge, head of the Climate Protection and Energy Department at the Federal Environment Agency. Climate finance is therefore the most politically charged issue, she said. China is giving money in the form of the “New Silk Road,” but it does not yet want to give up its status as a G77 country and thus as a recipient of international climate finance. “And China has a lot of staying power in that regard,” Dröge estimates.
This is also evident in the negotiations on reducing greenhouse gases to a 1.5-degree level (mitigation). The work program is one of the most important issues for the industrialized countries at COP27 because it is about whether the Paris target remains within reach. The industrialized countries want all major emitters to be obliged to reduce their emissions – including the “major emitters” such as China, India and Indonesia. The G77 is facing a strong headwind. This promises to be one of the sticking points of the second week.
The most common question this week will be: When and how will the EU increase its climate target? With the trilogue agreement on the LULUCF regulation, Europe is on track to cut more emissions than envisaged in the EU climate law. This would allow EU negotiators at COP27 to implement what they themselves are asking others to do: raise the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) deposited with the UN. The EU will certainly not officially announce an NDC increase in Sharm el-Sheikh. But it is likely to put this proposal on the table in negotiations with other countries.
The member states alone would be responsible for a higher climate target. The Commission and Parliament have no influence on this. There are three scenarios for how the EU can deal with the leeway gained from the LULUCF agreement for a higher NDC, a senior EU official told Table.Media.
The EU’s Climate Change Act and NDC call for greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced by “at least” 55 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. The word “at least” does not exclude a higher reduction.
A few EU states prefer this scenario. It leaves room for maneuver if the goals of the individual pieces of legislation in the Fit for 55 package are not achieved. However, this is unlikely to go down well internationally. Europe itself is insisting on NDC increases in climate negotiations with other countries. Therefore, this scenario is also considered unlikely.
The climate target remains at “at least 55 percent,” but the attached statements to the EU NDC, i.e. the implementation guidance, describe a higher target.
This would be the compromise. However, the political clout of this step in international negotiations would be significantly less than a de facto NDC increase.
Europe would thus fulfill a crucial part of the Glasgow Climate Pact and could build pressure on other nations. The increase is controversial among member states, however, as it would entail even greater commitments.
However, the EU agreed in Glasgow that all countries should revise their NDCs. If Europe takes its role as a self-proclaimed pioneer seriously, it must raise its own target.
However, another agreement is likely to go down less well in Sharm el-Sheikh, if it makes the rounds at all. Barely noticed, the EU Commission, Parliament and Council have dropped an important demand of the Parliament on international climate financing under the table:
The parliamentarians wanted member states to reserve at least ten percent of their revenues from the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) for climate protection measures in third countries particularly affected by climate protection. Parliamentarians reduced this to 7.5 percent. Nevertheless, the proposal did not stand a chance in the Council. The trilogue on ETS reform found the woolly wording: “Member states shall take into account the need to further increase international climate finance in vulnerable third countries.”
A fixed climate financing quota for ETS revenues would have strengthened the EU position at COP. Finally, the heated debate on the broken promise of 100 billion dollars annually dominates the debates. In addition to the compromise-averse member states, EU Climate Commissioner Frans Timmermans in particular is held responsible for this weakened deal.
Both the EPP and the Greens criticize the Dutchman for not exerting sufficient pressure on the Council. Timmermans is doing too much at once and is not focused on the important things, said the ETS rapporteur and environmental spokesman of the EPP, Peter Liese.
In addition to European climate legislation, Timmermans is also responsible for international climate negotiations. Liese fears that the commissioner, who is known for taking everything into his own hands, could be overwhelmed with his tasks. With an eye on COP27, he is therefore calling for an EU climate ambassador like China or the USA.
Michael Bloss (Greens) also recently expressed disappointment with the EU climate czar on several occasions. “If this climate conference fails, then you are also responsible for it,” Bloss said during a speech in the EU Parliament at the end of October.
Timmermans is therefore under enormous pressure this week. It is true that the Commission is not negotiating alone in Sharm el-Sheikh – in fact, the Council is theoretically primarily responsible. But the Czech Environment Minister, Marian Jurečka, has only been in office for two weeks and only temporarily. He is actually Minister of Labor, presumably, therefore, had little time to read up on the issues and will only be in Sharm el-Sheikh for one day. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock could therefore take on a more formative role at the ministerial level. In any case, the Green politician is one of Europe’s most ambitious ministers when it comes to international climate protection.
In Sharm el-Sheikh, the political temperature is rising: With the start of the second week, things are getting serious. Whether COP27 will be a success or not depends primarily on money. The most vulnerable countries want security quickly via a fixed financing facility. However, EU delegation leader Dusík immediately dampens expectations, as Lukas Scheid reports.
This is part of the political theater of a COP: sweeping demands followed by back-pedaling, hoping to meet somewhere near the middle. But why are the negotiators gambling when quick actions are so sorely needed? Because even they partially barely understand just how urgent it actually is, according to one of the leading scientific experts interviewed by Bernhard Pötter. “Many negotiators are not familiar with the latest research,” according to Johan Rockström, co-director of PIK. He warns: “The physics behind climate change is not negotiable.”
Here’s to an exciting and decisive week!
Mr. Rockström, you once again present the bitter data on the climate crisis to politicians and negotiators at COP. The data gets worse every year. Does that make you feel like a broken record?
Not like a broken record. But it definitely has elements of frustration. And it takes enormous patience. Before each COP, we consider to what extent participation by PIK researchers can be purposeful. After all, there are different formats: We sit on panels with politicians and negotiators, we brief them one-on-one, we do public outreach, and we meet people informally. Here I have met the UNFCCC president, the negotiators from the Nordic countries and Germany, Barbados, Seychelles, again and again, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), and G77 negotiators and many decision-makers from the business community.
What do politicians want to know when they talk to you?
It varies a lot. It often has to do with the CO2 budget or net zero targets and weather extremes or tipping points in the Earth system. But they often ask things that we as natural scientists don’t do research on: finance, for example, or questions of global justice.
Do the politicians and delegates at COP understand what this is all about?
After all these years, I have to say: Many negotiators are not familiar with the latest science; they are on a different level than the researchers. They are professional foreign policymakers and diplomats. But they often have little to do with risk analyses.
So the negotiators don’t understand what they are actually negotiating?
It’s getting better. But some negotiators at COPs think they can deal with scientific facts as if you could negotiate with physics.
What do you mean specifically?
Many negotiators understand that we have a problem. But they can’t always comprehend the degree of urgency and complexity. First and foremost, the time issue is a major challenge. This crisis is developing slowly, and at the same time, we need to intervene very quickly. Deciding whether to cross tipping points may be necessary very quickly, but the effects may not come for 100 years or even more.
What’s so hard to understand about that?
There are two different times: one for action and another for the consequences of that action. Politics and business only care about the consequences: When will the storm hit? But the time for decision and action is also relevant: When do you condemn all future generations of the world to a long-term ten meters higher sea level? If that’s dependent on our emissions in, say, 2030, then that’s very, very urgent. But if it’s clear that the ten meters might not actually happen until 2600, then you just write that off today and nobody cares. And that’s what we often see at these conferences: serious mistakes by politicians, economists, and negotiating teams in trying to match the consequences that will only become apparent over time with urgent decisions.
Have you developed tricks for teaching decision-makers anyway?
We have different approaches. For example, we now have a scientific paper evaluating how to deal with these time scales in communication. And there is good news: In 2017, we established the Carbon Law: Every decade, emissions must be cut in half to keep the Paris Agreement. Today, the Science-based Targets Initiative has adopted this law. Translating the findings into the 2 and 1.5 degree limits is another such example of making complex science actionable. That leads to a residual budget, and you can divide that up. That’s the kind of thing that policymakers can deal with. But still, not enough is happening.
Do you reason on a personal or moral level? Do you talk to the negotiators about the fate of their children and grandchildren?
I’m not asking these questions, but maybe I should. But sometimes, it comes up, especially since Fridays for Future has grown. There are 55 youth delegates here now, after all.
Do we still need more science on climate? Isn’t everything clear and said?
We have known enough for years to be able to act. New research, for example, into some elements in the Earth system, is enabling us to better determine the thresholds at which they can start to tip over, and of course we are also researching solutions to the climate problem. If our voices from the scientific community are getting louder, it’s mainly because we’re running out of time.
But people apparently don’t listen until their house floods.
Yes, it is terrible that no action is being taken. But if we didn’t have this patient detailed work of the IPCC over decades, there would be no action at all on climate protection.
Are there also meetings that give you hope?
That happens now and then, certainly not every time. Talking to senior business leaders, for example, at the World Economic Forum, gives me hope because they can drive change directly in their entrepreneurial actions.
Is it easier to talk about the climate with CEOs than with climate negotiators? But managers think in even shorter cycles.
No, many of them don’t. They want long-term security in the markets. We briefed the European truck manufacturers at PIK some time ago. After that, they collectively decided to phase out the internal combustion engine in 2040. They said: If we have to be at zero by 2050, we have to end internal combustion engines ten years before that.
What do you do to avoid becoming cynical in the business?
Never give up. I am stubborn. But despair and the end of the world are not on my daily agenda. Because I also love my work as an academic. My greatest joy this week was the news that we can revisit a study on planetary boundaries at a review. I love teaching and running an institute. We advance the state of knowledge and make that knowledge available to all. That’s our mission.
The euphoria over the new agenda item “loss and damage” has long since faded. After a week of sometimes tough negotiations, disillusionment has now set in at COP27. The negotiating teams are glad that they are now getting a new dynamic with the arrival of the ministers.
In the second week of COP, the following issues will dominate the debate:
New momentum is needed above all in the financing of loss and damage, because the fronts are increasingly hardened. The Global South continues to call for a compensation mechanism for loss and damage in the most vulnerable countries as quickly as possible. For the Europeans, however, it is now out of the question that this will be set up or decided in principle as early as Sharm el-Sheikh.
Particularly controversial is the question of whether such financial flows will be organized within existing instruments, such as the Green Climate Fund – or whether a separate structure (facility) will be set up. This is a political question that ministers must clarify, says Jacob Werksman, chief negotiator for the EU Commission. For the time being, Germany and the EU only want to push ahead with the further process of financing “loss and damage,” they say, in other words, to clarify details: When is there to be a decision, in what format will negotiations take place, how will losses and damage be recorded?
The person responsible for defining this process is Jennifer Morgan, Climate Commissioner and State Secretary at the German Foreign Office, but first and foremost, a mediator on loss and damage. Together with her co-mediator, Chilean Environment Minister Maisa Rojas, she will explore the margins between developed and developing countries this week. The negotiating texts for loss and damage funding are still full of staples and controversial options. There’s a lot of nagging detail work waiting.
The most vulnerable countries continue to call for concrete action this year. “What vulnerable countries need is a clear outcome that includes the provision of finance through a separate facility. We cannot pretend that procedural outcomes offer hope,” says Eddie Perez of Climate Action Network (CAN).
The Europeans, on the other hand, are positioning themselves as brakemen in the facility poker game: Jan Dusík, head of the delegation of the Czech Republic and the EU Council Presidency, did not even rule out the possibility that there will still be no agreement at COP28 next year in an interview with Table.Media. He said that it would first be necessary to clarify what scope and function such an instrument would have to have. Only then could one talk about the form of a facility. “Form follows function.” Only a new structure like a facility does not necessarily implement the loss and damage finances effectively. But this is a top priority for the EU, Dusík said.
On the other hand, Europeans are sending signals that they are ready to help: The G7, together with the most vulnerable 20 nations (V20), will present the “Global Shield” at COP on Monday. The shield, designed under the German G7 presidency (Climate.Table reported), is intended to take effect in the event of climate catastrophes and pay for damages. The German government makes 170 million euros available for this purpose. The presentation in Sharm el-Sheikh is supposed to win over further supporting countries.
In addition to financing issues related to loss and damage, other financial topics will accompany the negotiators until the end of COP27, as David Ryfischestimates, team leader for international climate policy at Germanwatch. The New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance aims to find a successor to the 100 billion dollars promised to developing countries from 2020. How much should it now be from 2025?
The developing countries want concrete commitments on sums or, for example, percentage sub-targets for climate adaptation. The industrialized countries are putting on the brakes and would prefer to clarify only formal issues here as well, Ryfisch reports. An open question: Must all funds be compatible with the 1.5-degree target? The EU has not been able to get the issue of how global financial flows must be redirected for the Paris Agreement under Article 2.1c on the agenda. Now it should at least feature prominently in the political “cover decision,” as Europeans wish.
According to Ryfisch, however, the Latin American countries have already presented a compromise. Although there will be no concrete commitments for climate financing after 2025 this year, there will be binding commitments next year. The ministers must now negotiate this at the political level.
In addition, the industrialized nations would like to expand the circle of donor countries in climate financing. That would mean that not only the richest countries in Europe, North America and East Asia would participate in global climate financing, but also those that already cause a large share of greenhouse gas emissions. “In doing so, however, they are hitting a snag with China,” Ryfisch said.
The discussion of whether China is a donor or recipient country for financial support comes up again and again at COP27. “Recognizing one’s own polluter role is the hardest part,” says Susanne Dröge, head of the Climate Protection and Energy Department at the Federal Environment Agency. Climate finance is therefore the most politically charged issue, she said. China is giving money in the form of the “New Silk Road,” but it does not yet want to give up its status as a G77 country and thus as a recipient of international climate finance. “And China has a lot of staying power in that regard,” Dröge estimates.
This is also evident in the negotiations on reducing greenhouse gases to a 1.5-degree level (mitigation). The work program is one of the most important issues for the industrialized countries at COP27 because it is about whether the Paris target remains within reach. The industrialized countries want all major emitters to be obliged to reduce their emissions – including the “major emitters” such as China, India and Indonesia. The G77 is facing a strong headwind. This promises to be one of the sticking points of the second week.
The most common question this week will be: When and how will the EU increase its climate target? With the trilogue agreement on the LULUCF regulation, Europe is on track to cut more emissions than envisaged in the EU climate law. This would allow EU negotiators at COP27 to implement what they themselves are asking others to do: raise the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) deposited with the UN. The EU will certainly not officially announce an NDC increase in Sharm el-Sheikh. But it is likely to put this proposal on the table in negotiations with other countries.
The member states alone would be responsible for a higher climate target. The Commission and Parliament have no influence on this. There are three scenarios for how the EU can deal with the leeway gained from the LULUCF agreement for a higher NDC, a senior EU official told Table.Media.
The EU’s Climate Change Act and NDC call for greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced by “at least” 55 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. The word “at least” does not exclude a higher reduction.
A few EU states prefer this scenario. It leaves room for maneuver if the goals of the individual pieces of legislation in the Fit for 55 package are not achieved. However, this is unlikely to go down well internationally. Europe itself is insisting on NDC increases in climate negotiations with other countries. Therefore, this scenario is also considered unlikely.
The climate target remains at “at least 55 percent,” but the attached statements to the EU NDC, i.e. the implementation guidance, describe a higher target.
This would be the compromise. However, the political clout of this step in international negotiations would be significantly less than a de facto NDC increase.
Europe would thus fulfill a crucial part of the Glasgow Climate Pact and could build pressure on other nations. The increase is controversial among member states, however, as it would entail even greater commitments.
However, the EU agreed in Glasgow that all countries should revise their NDCs. If Europe takes its role as a self-proclaimed pioneer seriously, it must raise its own target.
However, another agreement is likely to go down less well in Sharm el-Sheikh, if it makes the rounds at all. Barely noticed, the EU Commission, Parliament and Council have dropped an important demand of the Parliament on international climate financing under the table:
The parliamentarians wanted member states to reserve at least ten percent of their revenues from the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) for climate protection measures in third countries particularly affected by climate protection. Parliamentarians reduced this to 7.5 percent. Nevertheless, the proposal did not stand a chance in the Council. The trilogue on ETS reform found the woolly wording: “Member states shall take into account the need to further increase international climate finance in vulnerable third countries.”
A fixed climate financing quota for ETS revenues would have strengthened the EU position at COP. Finally, the heated debate on the broken promise of 100 billion dollars annually dominates the debates. In addition to the compromise-averse member states, EU Climate Commissioner Frans Timmermans in particular is held responsible for this weakened deal.
Both the EPP and the Greens criticize the Dutchman for not exerting sufficient pressure on the Council. Timmermans is doing too much at once and is not focused on the important things, said the ETS rapporteur and environmental spokesman of the EPP, Peter Liese.
In addition to European climate legislation, Timmermans is also responsible for international climate negotiations. Liese fears that the commissioner, who is known for taking everything into his own hands, could be overwhelmed with his tasks. With an eye on COP27, he is therefore calling for an EU climate ambassador like China or the USA.
Michael Bloss (Greens) also recently expressed disappointment with the EU climate czar on several occasions. “If this climate conference fails, then you are also responsible for it,” Bloss said during a speech in the EU Parliament at the end of October.
Timmermans is therefore under enormous pressure this week. It is true that the Commission is not negotiating alone in Sharm el-Sheikh – in fact, the Council is theoretically primarily responsible. But the Czech Environment Minister, Marian Jurečka, has only been in office for two weeks and only temporarily. He is actually Minister of Labor, presumably, therefore, had little time to read up on the issues and will only be in Sharm el-Sheikh for one day. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock could therefore take on a more formative role at the ministerial level. In any case, the Green politician is one of Europe’s most ambitious ministers when it comes to international climate protection.
