A long week of summits is coming to an end. Now that the dust of the political speeches has settled a bit, we take stock in today’s Climate Table Special: At António Guterres’ Climate Ambition Summit and the UN General Assembly, some new financial pledges and announcements on the coal phase-out have been made. There was no breakthrough, however. Instead, the summit was intended to provide impetus for the negotiations in Dubai this December.
Achieving new breakthroughs at COP28 will require new alliances, writes Urmi Goswati. The beginning of the break-up of old blocs was already visible at the last climate conference. With current proposals such as tripling renewables and phasing out fossil fuels, we could see entirely new alliances based on national interests rather than old blocs. But the enlarged BRICS group could also exert its influence as a new fossil heavyweight.
After all, climate politics sometimes happens in places where it doesn’t say “climate” on the label. Next week, a summit of the chemical industry will take place in the German city of Bonn. One goal is reducing waste and pollution and cutting emissions. Leonie Sontheimer has taken the opportunity to analyze the Hamburg-based start-up Traceless and its concept for compostable plastic.
Best regards
Just three months before COP28 in Dubai, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has made it clear that he does not want to leave international climate policy to the UN member countries. With his day-long Climate Ambition Summit and the many events around the SDG Summit and the UN General Assembly in New York, Guterres has clearly laid claim to leadership on these issues. A claim that the UN has not made in any key area of international relations for a long time.
This is because the extraordinary ambition summit did not follow the basic principle of the regular UN climate conferences. In those, UN countries jealously ensure that the process is “party-driven,” i.e. that the countries themselves set the course. Because, at least in the case of climate, this means not enough progress is being made, UN leaders have occasionally attempted to speed up the process. But no one has made this as clear as Portugal’s Guterres. Anyone who wanted to speak at his summit had to apply with a detailed questionnaire: More than 100 countries and over 100 companies sought the spotlight of the global public. Guterres only granted it to 34 countries and seven NGOs.
Thus, the UN now has what should not exist according to its grassroots democratic understanding: A quasi-official ranking with the seal of the UN Secretary-General, which country and which company is taking climate action seriously – and who is deemed an obstructionist, fraud, greenwasher and profiteer who is causing humanity to “open the gates of hell,” as Guterres puts it.
The stakes are high: Selwin Hart, climate advisor to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, sees “the most important COP since Paris” coming up this December. The global stocktake of climate efforts is very important, Hart explained on Thursday, looking back on the day-long summit, for which he played a key role in its preparation and coordination. And to give this meeting the necessary momentum the UN reserved the day on the sidelines of the 78th General Assembly. Now, it is clear: “We have never had so much clarity about what needs to be done, by whom and in what time frame.”
For Hart, as for all experts, one thing is clear: the global stocktake clearly states “we are not on the right track,” but it is about more than looking back. What is needed is not a “course correction”, but a transformation with an eye on carbon reduction, finances and adaptation. Money, technology and knowledge are available, what is needed above all is political courage. And because that is so difficult, Guterres wanted to put those on display who lead the way, set out and take risks, Hart says.
That is why the UN chief’s ambition summit has produced a lot of other important announcements and reports around the event in New York. They are intended to carry as much momentum as possible to Dubai:
At the “Climate Ambition Summit” on 20 September, UN Secretary-General António Guterres gathered a motley crew of climate action pioneers in the UN building: In addition to traditionally ambitious states such as the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Kenya, Nepal or the EU Commission, the UN chief also honored states that have so far not been very visible as climate advocates: For example, Cuba, Romania, Colombia or Canada. The coalition of the willing was joined by the US state of California, the Mayor of London, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the insurance company Allianz.
This shows that serious climate action is looking for new coalitions 70 days before the COP28 in Dubai. Beyond the usual alliances in the UN, countries and non-states are joining forces for their own interests. How the political deliberations on the Global Stocktake, which will culminate in Dubai, are reflected in a decision emerging from COP28 remains to be seen. Much will depend on how countries find partners and create alliances. For example, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is trying to “break up the old blocs in climate policy” because “the climate crisis is no longer a matter of block affiliations.”
Different interests are also showing in the Global North: The Inflation Reduction Act in the US, like the EU border tariff CBAM, has intensified the race for global green markets between the developed countries. Europeans have become more careful about their traditional allies, the United States, which could turn its back on climate policy again with a Republican president in 2025.
COP28 President-designate Sultan al Jaber has outlined his goals for the December summit. These include:
Each represents a critical piece of the global effort to slow global warming by limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees by 2100. However, not every signatory to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and agreements and decisions made under it, including the Paris Agreement, are ready to sign up for all these measures. Ensuring wider purchase and a working compromise will require working with partners – ones that do not necessarily reflect traditional groupings in the UN, but rather national interests.
A practical example: At COP27 in Egypt, a surprising proposal by India found unexpected allies and opponents. The wording for the “phase down all fossil fuels” found support from the European Union, then small island states – about 80 countries in all. India, however, had no support from its usual negotiating partners, such as China and Saudi Arabia. And India’s proposal also failed to find support from the Egyptian COP presidency, also a member of the G77/China group, after all.
But the New York summit has also increased pressure to push for a fossil phase-out in Dubai. Here, too, island nations, for example, called for a “non-proliferation treaty” for fossil fuels, which “undermine all 17 SDG targets,” as Kausea Natano, prime minister of Tuvalu, put it. This plan will likely once again require a non-traditional alliance. That’s because, at the G20 ministerial meeting on energy transition, which sought agreement on phasing out fossil fuels, this proposal was met with opposition from Saudi Arabia, China, the US, Brazil and South Africa, according to Table.Media – another notable alliance that follows non-traditional borders. As the G20 chair, India failed with its push for the phase-out and had to accept a repetition of the existing formulations on coal.
New alliances are also needed to reach an agreement on tripling renewable energy: If the G20 negotiations are an indication – setting a target figure for the tripling again found favor from India, the European Union, and Germany. But opposition came from countries that were looking at “options other than renewable energy to decarbonize their energy systems.” That puts countries like the United States, Saudi Arabia in the nay column. France also did not vote in favor because of its nuclear policy.
Yet recent times have shown that bridging historical differences is possible, for example, at the COP27 with the proposal for a fossil fuel phase-down. In turn, even wealthy countries can sometimes disagree on energy policy (as in the dispute over fossil investments at the G7 meeting in Japan in 2022). And national interests and pragmatism create new alliances (tripling renewables at the G20 in India). It also remains questionable how the new alliances will be reflected in climate policy: The enlargement of the BRICS states to include countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has turned the alliance into a heavyweight of oil and gas producers. In the past, the BRICS countries have not found a common position on climate issues.
However, the old fronts remain unchanged when it comes to the issue of financing: Developed countries have so far failed to keep their pledge of 100 billion dollars annually for climate aid to developing countries. Here, the dominant mindset is still to “break up the G77 and China” in order to make progress – or, alternatively, to lump all rich developed countries together as colonial powers and the main cause of the climate crisis. This dualism has dominated the COPs for a long time and will not disappear soon. Collaboration: Bernhard Pötter
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has invited the chemical industry to a top-level meeting at the Chancellery on September 27. One of the ten invited companies is not a large corporation, but a small circular economy start-up: the Hamburg-based company Traceless has grand ambitions. “Our business purpose is to help the environment,” says founder and engineer Anne Lamp. At the top meeting, she doesn’t want to be a fig leaf for conventional industry, but to transform it. With a product intended to replace plastic and not leave any trace in the environment.
The time and place for the chemical summit is no coincidence: From September 25 to 29, the fifth International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM5) will be held in the German city of Bonn – the COP of the chemical industry. A non-binding framework, the SAICM, was adopted at the first ICCM in Dubai in 2006. The goal: From 2020, chemicals should be used and produced in a way that minimizes significant adverse effects on human health and the environment. This goal was missed by a wide margin.
At ICCM5, the overdue global framework for sustainable management in the chemicals sector is now to be agreed under German chairmanship. According to Anita Breyer, president of ICCM5, all sectors, i.e., the chemical industry, manufacturing industry, mining, agriculture and services, should “make more conscious decisions about the use of chemicals in order to avoid harmful effects on human health and the environment over the entire life cycle.” In particular, he said, this would require the creation of legal foundations, regulations and regulatory capacities.
As with most climate COPs, no ambitious targets binding under international law can be expected from the ICCM. Here, too, emerging and developing countries are calling for financial support for the implementation of the targets and the restructuring of their economies.
Traceless aims to drive this transformation. Founder Anne Lamp worked as a process engineer for various companies before founding the company with Johanna Baare in 2020. They currently employ a staff of 37. In a pilot factory near Hamburg, plant residues from industrial grain processing are used to produce a biomaterial that is intended to replace plastic. This granulate will be further processed using standard technologies from the plastics and packaging industry – into small parts such as disposable cutlery or paper coatings. A pilot product made from this material is already hanging in C&A’s sock section.
The trick is that Traceless’ yellow-brown biomaterial is supposed to be completely biodegradable – hence the name. The company claims that no chemical products are used in production and that there is no wastewater or waste. And the carbon footprint is also said to be negligible. According to a study by a venture capital fund, the production and disposal of Traceless emits up to 95 percent less greenhouse gas than new plastic.
To achieve this, “a much less energy-intensive process has been developed,” says Anne Lamp. “Plastic consists of long chains of macromolecules. Producing them artificially takes a lot of energy. We use the polymers that nature itself has produced and thus save energy during production.”
That is why natural polymers are compostable: “The natural microorganisms out there already know how to handle them, and can easily digest them,” the start-up’s website says. Lamp is an advocate of the circular economy; she believes it is the solution to climate change, resource consumption, and pollution. And she wants competition: “We hope to see many, many more start-ups launching new biomaterials based on residual materials.”
She knows that “we cannot replace all plastic with Traceless.” One of the reasons for this is that the material decomposes after prolonged contact with water. Nevertheless, Lamp has patented the Traceless process. She aims to enter the market with the granulate in early 2025. The first industrial plant is currently under planning, with funding of five million euros from the German Federal Ministry for the Environment.
But not everyone is enthusiastic. Thomas Fischer, an expert on the circular economy at the German environmental organization DUH, doesn’t believe Traceless’ approach results in less waste. He criticizes how the plastics industry generally advertises compostability. “The question is: How do people dispose of these products? Very few have their own compost in the garden. But bioplastics may not be disposed of in the organic waste garbage – except bioplastic bags.” Last year, Environmental Action Germany had a composting facility test how effectively various products advertised as “compostable” or “biodegradable” decompose. “Almost nothing degraded there,” says Fischer, summarizing the results of the test.
Fischer’s main criticism of Traceless is that the material is also used to make disposable products. “Even if a fork for fries were perfectly compostable, as a disposable product, it wastes resources when there are actually reusable alternatives.”
Fischer sees particularly high potential for green chemistry in further optimized separate organic waste collection. “Far too much organic material ends up unused in residual waste. Yet it could still be used to produce substances that can be used in the chemical industry.” At present, however, renewable raw materials tend to come in the form of sugar cane from Brazil or corn from the USA. This is cheap, but not the right way, Fischer says.
“We are at an extremely critical moment in our fight against the climate crisis.” Those words from Selwin Hart, the UN Secretary General’s Special Advisor on climate change are not standard issue rhetoric belted out ahead of a major climate meet.
Hart, who has been the UNSG’s go-to man on climate change since 2020, is deeply concerned. “Quite frankly, we’re not in a good place.” Explaining his concern, the diplomat from the Caribbean island nation of Barbados points to the indicators on climate, “they are all heading in the wrong direction.”
What worries Hart the most is the absence of leadership at a time when it seems that countries are no longer able to work cooperatively and collaboratively. “The countries with the financial and technological capacity to lead are not doing so in a way that the science absolutely demands. So, you have this vacuum of leadership, you also have this breakdown of trust between developed and developing countries.”
Hearing Hart talk with such passion and clarity makes it difficult to accept that his engagement with climate change was unplanned and “sudden.” Hart’s engagement with climate change began around 2004 during his time as diplomat representing Barbados at the UN. This was when he said climate emerged as “one of the big foreign policy priorities” of the Barbados government, of the Caribbean and for the small island developing states. Recalling his introduction to climate change and international climate negotiations, Hart said, “I was thrown in at the deep end. I am not a climate scientist or anything like that. I am an economist by training. I was thrown into the negotiations and quite frankly, I had to learn to swim very quickly.” His first UNFCCC negotiation was in 2007 with the COP in Bali.
The criticality of addressing development needs was something Hart had realized early in life. Growing up in Church Village, Barbados, Hart says the absence of material goods was overshadowed by strong bonds of family and community. Talking of growing years, Hart speaks about the village primary school he attended and how “kids would come to school without shoes.” He talks about not having electricity, “My parents didn’t have electricity. My grandmother didn’t have it either and I would read to her or I would read by the light of a kerosene lamp.” At 11, his outstanding performance on a test led to a place at Harrison College, a grammar school in Bridgetown, Barbados. A 45-minute bus ride became the regular feature of the remainder of his student days.
The daily to and fro between rural Barbados, where most people worked on the land in sugar plantations to the capital city with its paved roads, cars and other amenities, makes it easy for Hart to understand the concerns of the developing world and the importance of climate justice and equity. “We need to urgently deliver climate justice to those on the frontlines of the climate crisis, which means ensuring that long-standing promises on finance are delivered, ensuring that priority is placed on adaptation and resilience building,” says Hart.
Before becoming UN special advisor, Hart served as executive director of the Inter-American Development Bank. From that job, he knows firsthand the need for funding. In conversation, for example, he cites UNSG’s idea of a Global Solidarity Pact that “builds on the just energy transition partnerships that Secretary-General has advocated for over the course of the last two years.”
Reiterating the SG’s message, Hart says that the world has all the tools to solve the climate crisis. “What we need is consolidation, collaboration and cooperation among countries, financial institutions and businesses to solve some of these big challenges around decarbonization and climate justice.”
Even as he acknowledges the challenges, Hart says he is “still hopeful. I’m always optimistic.” Urmi Goswami
A long week of summits is coming to an end. Now that the dust of the political speeches has settled a bit, we take stock in today’s Climate Table Special: At António Guterres’ Climate Ambition Summit and the UN General Assembly, some new financial pledges and announcements on the coal phase-out have been made. There was no breakthrough, however. Instead, the summit was intended to provide impetus for the negotiations in Dubai this December.
Achieving new breakthroughs at COP28 will require new alliances, writes Urmi Goswati. The beginning of the break-up of old blocs was already visible at the last climate conference. With current proposals such as tripling renewables and phasing out fossil fuels, we could see entirely new alliances based on national interests rather than old blocs. But the enlarged BRICS group could also exert its influence as a new fossil heavyweight.
After all, climate politics sometimes happens in places where it doesn’t say “climate” on the label. Next week, a summit of the chemical industry will take place in the German city of Bonn. One goal is reducing waste and pollution and cutting emissions. Leonie Sontheimer has taken the opportunity to analyze the Hamburg-based start-up Traceless and its concept for compostable plastic.
Best regards
Just three months before COP28 in Dubai, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has made it clear that he does not want to leave international climate policy to the UN member countries. With his day-long Climate Ambition Summit and the many events around the SDG Summit and the UN General Assembly in New York, Guterres has clearly laid claim to leadership on these issues. A claim that the UN has not made in any key area of international relations for a long time.
This is because the extraordinary ambition summit did not follow the basic principle of the regular UN climate conferences. In those, UN countries jealously ensure that the process is “party-driven,” i.e. that the countries themselves set the course. Because, at least in the case of climate, this means not enough progress is being made, UN leaders have occasionally attempted to speed up the process. But no one has made this as clear as Portugal’s Guterres. Anyone who wanted to speak at his summit had to apply with a detailed questionnaire: More than 100 countries and over 100 companies sought the spotlight of the global public. Guterres only granted it to 34 countries and seven NGOs.
Thus, the UN now has what should not exist according to its grassroots democratic understanding: A quasi-official ranking with the seal of the UN Secretary-General, which country and which company is taking climate action seriously – and who is deemed an obstructionist, fraud, greenwasher and profiteer who is causing humanity to “open the gates of hell,” as Guterres puts it.
The stakes are high: Selwin Hart, climate advisor to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, sees “the most important COP since Paris” coming up this December. The global stocktake of climate efforts is very important, Hart explained on Thursday, looking back on the day-long summit, for which he played a key role in its preparation and coordination. And to give this meeting the necessary momentum the UN reserved the day on the sidelines of the 78th General Assembly. Now, it is clear: “We have never had so much clarity about what needs to be done, by whom and in what time frame.”
For Hart, as for all experts, one thing is clear: the global stocktake clearly states “we are not on the right track,” but it is about more than looking back. What is needed is not a “course correction”, but a transformation with an eye on carbon reduction, finances and adaptation. Money, technology and knowledge are available, what is needed above all is political courage. And because that is so difficult, Guterres wanted to put those on display who lead the way, set out and take risks, Hart says.
That is why the UN chief’s ambition summit has produced a lot of other important announcements and reports around the event in New York. They are intended to carry as much momentum as possible to Dubai:
At the “Climate Ambition Summit” on 20 September, UN Secretary-General António Guterres gathered a motley crew of climate action pioneers in the UN building: In addition to traditionally ambitious states such as the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Kenya, Nepal or the EU Commission, the UN chief also honored states that have so far not been very visible as climate advocates: For example, Cuba, Romania, Colombia or Canada. The coalition of the willing was joined by the US state of California, the Mayor of London, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the insurance company Allianz.
This shows that serious climate action is looking for new coalitions 70 days before the COP28 in Dubai. Beyond the usual alliances in the UN, countries and non-states are joining forces for their own interests. How the political deliberations on the Global Stocktake, which will culminate in Dubai, are reflected in a decision emerging from COP28 remains to be seen. Much will depend on how countries find partners and create alliances. For example, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is trying to “break up the old blocs in climate policy” because “the climate crisis is no longer a matter of block affiliations.”
Different interests are also showing in the Global North: The Inflation Reduction Act in the US, like the EU border tariff CBAM, has intensified the race for global green markets between the developed countries. Europeans have become more careful about their traditional allies, the United States, which could turn its back on climate policy again with a Republican president in 2025.
COP28 President-designate Sultan al Jaber has outlined his goals for the December summit. These include:
Each represents a critical piece of the global effort to slow global warming by limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees by 2100. However, not every signatory to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and agreements and decisions made under it, including the Paris Agreement, are ready to sign up for all these measures. Ensuring wider purchase and a working compromise will require working with partners – ones that do not necessarily reflect traditional groupings in the UN, but rather national interests.
A practical example: At COP27 in Egypt, a surprising proposal by India found unexpected allies and opponents. The wording for the “phase down all fossil fuels” found support from the European Union, then small island states – about 80 countries in all. India, however, had no support from its usual negotiating partners, such as China and Saudi Arabia. And India’s proposal also failed to find support from the Egyptian COP presidency, also a member of the G77/China group, after all.
But the New York summit has also increased pressure to push for a fossil phase-out in Dubai. Here, too, island nations, for example, called for a “non-proliferation treaty” for fossil fuels, which “undermine all 17 SDG targets,” as Kausea Natano, prime minister of Tuvalu, put it. This plan will likely once again require a non-traditional alliance. That’s because, at the G20 ministerial meeting on energy transition, which sought agreement on phasing out fossil fuels, this proposal was met with opposition from Saudi Arabia, China, the US, Brazil and South Africa, according to Table.Media – another notable alliance that follows non-traditional borders. As the G20 chair, India failed with its push for the phase-out and had to accept a repetition of the existing formulations on coal.
New alliances are also needed to reach an agreement on tripling renewable energy: If the G20 negotiations are an indication – setting a target figure for the tripling again found favor from India, the European Union, and Germany. But opposition came from countries that were looking at “options other than renewable energy to decarbonize their energy systems.” That puts countries like the United States, Saudi Arabia in the nay column. France also did not vote in favor because of its nuclear policy.
Yet recent times have shown that bridging historical differences is possible, for example, at the COP27 with the proposal for a fossil fuel phase-down. In turn, even wealthy countries can sometimes disagree on energy policy (as in the dispute over fossil investments at the G7 meeting in Japan in 2022). And national interests and pragmatism create new alliances (tripling renewables at the G20 in India). It also remains questionable how the new alliances will be reflected in climate policy: The enlargement of the BRICS states to include countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has turned the alliance into a heavyweight of oil and gas producers. In the past, the BRICS countries have not found a common position on climate issues.
However, the old fronts remain unchanged when it comes to the issue of financing: Developed countries have so far failed to keep their pledge of 100 billion dollars annually for climate aid to developing countries. Here, the dominant mindset is still to “break up the G77 and China” in order to make progress – or, alternatively, to lump all rich developed countries together as colonial powers and the main cause of the climate crisis. This dualism has dominated the COPs for a long time and will not disappear soon. Collaboration: Bernhard Pötter
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has invited the chemical industry to a top-level meeting at the Chancellery on September 27. One of the ten invited companies is not a large corporation, but a small circular economy start-up: the Hamburg-based company Traceless has grand ambitions. “Our business purpose is to help the environment,” says founder and engineer Anne Lamp. At the top meeting, she doesn’t want to be a fig leaf for conventional industry, but to transform it. With a product intended to replace plastic and not leave any trace in the environment.
The time and place for the chemical summit is no coincidence: From September 25 to 29, the fifth International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM5) will be held in the German city of Bonn – the COP of the chemical industry. A non-binding framework, the SAICM, was adopted at the first ICCM in Dubai in 2006. The goal: From 2020, chemicals should be used and produced in a way that minimizes significant adverse effects on human health and the environment. This goal was missed by a wide margin.
At ICCM5, the overdue global framework for sustainable management in the chemicals sector is now to be agreed under German chairmanship. According to Anita Breyer, president of ICCM5, all sectors, i.e., the chemical industry, manufacturing industry, mining, agriculture and services, should “make more conscious decisions about the use of chemicals in order to avoid harmful effects on human health and the environment over the entire life cycle.” In particular, he said, this would require the creation of legal foundations, regulations and regulatory capacities.
As with most climate COPs, no ambitious targets binding under international law can be expected from the ICCM. Here, too, emerging and developing countries are calling for financial support for the implementation of the targets and the restructuring of their economies.
Traceless aims to drive this transformation. Founder Anne Lamp worked as a process engineer for various companies before founding the company with Johanna Baare in 2020. They currently employ a staff of 37. In a pilot factory near Hamburg, plant residues from industrial grain processing are used to produce a biomaterial that is intended to replace plastic. This granulate will be further processed using standard technologies from the plastics and packaging industry – into small parts such as disposable cutlery or paper coatings. A pilot product made from this material is already hanging in C&A’s sock section.
The trick is that Traceless’ yellow-brown biomaterial is supposed to be completely biodegradable – hence the name. The company claims that no chemical products are used in production and that there is no wastewater or waste. And the carbon footprint is also said to be negligible. According to a study by a venture capital fund, the production and disposal of Traceless emits up to 95 percent less greenhouse gas than new plastic.
To achieve this, “a much less energy-intensive process has been developed,” says Anne Lamp. “Plastic consists of long chains of macromolecules. Producing them artificially takes a lot of energy. We use the polymers that nature itself has produced and thus save energy during production.”
That is why natural polymers are compostable: “The natural microorganisms out there already know how to handle them, and can easily digest them,” the start-up’s website says. Lamp is an advocate of the circular economy; she believes it is the solution to climate change, resource consumption, and pollution. And she wants competition: “We hope to see many, many more start-ups launching new biomaterials based on residual materials.”
She knows that “we cannot replace all plastic with Traceless.” One of the reasons for this is that the material decomposes after prolonged contact with water. Nevertheless, Lamp has patented the Traceless process. She aims to enter the market with the granulate in early 2025. The first industrial plant is currently under planning, with funding of five million euros from the German Federal Ministry for the Environment.
But not everyone is enthusiastic. Thomas Fischer, an expert on the circular economy at the German environmental organization DUH, doesn’t believe Traceless’ approach results in less waste. He criticizes how the plastics industry generally advertises compostability. “The question is: How do people dispose of these products? Very few have their own compost in the garden. But bioplastics may not be disposed of in the organic waste garbage – except bioplastic bags.” Last year, Environmental Action Germany had a composting facility test how effectively various products advertised as “compostable” or “biodegradable” decompose. “Almost nothing degraded there,” says Fischer, summarizing the results of the test.
Fischer’s main criticism of Traceless is that the material is also used to make disposable products. “Even if a fork for fries were perfectly compostable, as a disposable product, it wastes resources when there are actually reusable alternatives.”
Fischer sees particularly high potential for green chemistry in further optimized separate organic waste collection. “Far too much organic material ends up unused in residual waste. Yet it could still be used to produce substances that can be used in the chemical industry.” At present, however, renewable raw materials tend to come in the form of sugar cane from Brazil or corn from the USA. This is cheap, but not the right way, Fischer says.
“We are at an extremely critical moment in our fight against the climate crisis.” Those words from Selwin Hart, the UN Secretary General’s Special Advisor on climate change are not standard issue rhetoric belted out ahead of a major climate meet.
Hart, who has been the UNSG’s go-to man on climate change since 2020, is deeply concerned. “Quite frankly, we’re not in a good place.” Explaining his concern, the diplomat from the Caribbean island nation of Barbados points to the indicators on climate, “they are all heading in the wrong direction.”
What worries Hart the most is the absence of leadership at a time when it seems that countries are no longer able to work cooperatively and collaboratively. “The countries with the financial and technological capacity to lead are not doing so in a way that the science absolutely demands. So, you have this vacuum of leadership, you also have this breakdown of trust between developed and developing countries.”
Hearing Hart talk with such passion and clarity makes it difficult to accept that his engagement with climate change was unplanned and “sudden.” Hart’s engagement with climate change began around 2004 during his time as diplomat representing Barbados at the UN. This was when he said climate emerged as “one of the big foreign policy priorities” of the Barbados government, of the Caribbean and for the small island developing states. Recalling his introduction to climate change and international climate negotiations, Hart said, “I was thrown in at the deep end. I am not a climate scientist or anything like that. I am an economist by training. I was thrown into the negotiations and quite frankly, I had to learn to swim very quickly.” His first UNFCCC negotiation was in 2007 with the COP in Bali.
The criticality of addressing development needs was something Hart had realized early in life. Growing up in Church Village, Barbados, Hart says the absence of material goods was overshadowed by strong bonds of family and community. Talking of growing years, Hart speaks about the village primary school he attended and how “kids would come to school without shoes.” He talks about not having electricity, “My parents didn’t have electricity. My grandmother didn’t have it either and I would read to her or I would read by the light of a kerosene lamp.” At 11, his outstanding performance on a test led to a place at Harrison College, a grammar school in Bridgetown, Barbados. A 45-minute bus ride became the regular feature of the remainder of his student days.
The daily to and fro between rural Barbados, where most people worked on the land in sugar plantations to the capital city with its paved roads, cars and other amenities, makes it easy for Hart to understand the concerns of the developing world and the importance of climate justice and equity. “We need to urgently deliver climate justice to those on the frontlines of the climate crisis, which means ensuring that long-standing promises on finance are delivered, ensuring that priority is placed on adaptation and resilience building,” says Hart.
Before becoming UN special advisor, Hart served as executive director of the Inter-American Development Bank. From that job, he knows firsthand the need for funding. In conversation, for example, he cites UNSG’s idea of a Global Solidarity Pact that “builds on the just energy transition partnerships that Secretary-General has advocated for over the course of the last two years.”
Reiterating the SG’s message, Hart says that the world has all the tools to solve the climate crisis. “What we need is consolidation, collaboration and cooperation among countries, financial institutions and businesses to solve some of these big challenges around decarbonization and climate justice.”
Even as he acknowledges the challenges, Hart says he is “still hopeful. I’m always optimistic.” Urmi Goswami
