More than 50,000 inhabitants of the Andean city of Huaraz are threatened by a flood wave due to global warming. The Andean farmer and mountain guide Saúl Luciano Lliuya decided to take action: On 24 November 2015, he filed a lawsuit against the energy company RWE in a German civil court. One year after the court visit to Huaraz, the expert report will finally be available this summer. A hearing at the Higher Regional Court of Hamm is expected later this year.

In the lead up to this weekend’s G7 Leaders’ Summit in Hiroshima, Germany has been exposed for joining Japan in pushing fellow G7 members to backslide on previous commitments and endorse increased public investments in gas. Contrary to what Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz says, different studies show that new investments in gas are not necessary to increase energy security but only exacerbate the climate crisis and threaten food security. Chancellor Scholz risks undermining a successful G7 Summit regarding climate for the second year.

Following the release of their ‘Instrument Methods’ for Paris alignment, the World Bank Group published accompanying sector notes for Energy and Extractives; Agriculture and Food; Transport; Environment, Natural Resources and Blue Economy; Water; as well as Urban, Resilience, Disaster Risk Management, and Land. The notes detail the approach to assess whether different types of projects in these sectors are aligned with the Paris Agreement. The World Bank Group will update the notes, and will publish six more for additional sectors. In this blog we look at whether the approaches in the notes are sufficient to avoid financial flows that conflict with the Paris Agreement.

To take advantage of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) and other financing opportunities, Indonesia must identify key requirements to create the right environment for cooperation without violating existing principles. Our background paper provides a brief overview of the state of the energy transition plan and financing in Indonesia.

In a series of dialogues with Indonesian civil society organisations (CSOs), Germanwatch and the Habibie Center explored how to integrate social justice aspects into the energy transition debate in Indonesia. This policy brief provides the context for how Indonesian CSOs view the JETP and how they relate to other key socio-economic issues.

There are several metrics and possibilities to measure the performance of climate policies and actions, which differ in methodology and indicator choice.
Our Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) measures the climate performance of 59 countries (and the EU) that are collectively responsible for over 90% of global emissions. All major economies and many emerging economies are included.
The CCPI is based on criteria including the country’s emissions levels, energy use, and use of renewable energy, as well as its climate policies (find more about our methodology here). Other indexes place their focus in different areas and this post will examine those, as well, giving credit where due, because all the indexes serve an important role.
This post examines the importance of scientific climate performance indexes, and how you can understand them.

Year after year, the CCPI finds economically developed countries from the Global North, including many EU countries, contributed disproportionally to global warming. Factors such as high greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, lagging climate policy, and high energy use are responsible for a low rank in the CCPI. However, which are the worst polluters, and why? The CCPI can identify them in several easy-to-understand ways. It shows their poor climate performance and opportunities for them to improve on it and take effective climate action.

In the EU, reform of the Stability and Growth Pact is on the agenda. German and French civil society organisations therefore call in their joint letter to the German Federal Minister of Finance and his French counterpart for the relaxation of the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact in combination with the establishment of a new EU climate and biodiversity fund. Investments in the green and just transition are essential to ensure the resilience, prosperity, and social justice of our economies and societies.

On April 18, the European Parliament will vote on the reform of the Emissions Trading System (ETS) and the new Social Climate Fund (SCF). European NGOs, including Germanwatch, have published a joint statement emphasising the importance of the new fund to ensure social justice. However, Germanwatch and the other signatories call for a substantial increase in funding to ensure that European climate action is fair and just.

The World Bank Group (WBG) has published the first set of documents beginning to detail how they will align their investments with the Paris Agreement – the so-called “Paris Alignment Methodology”. The publication of these methodologies is a long overdue first step to deliver on the commitment to align the WBG operations with the goals of the Paris Agreement. They will need to be strengthened and clarified to fully align the WBG investments with the Paris Agreement.