Germanwatch-Blog

Scorching heat, heavy rainfalls, raging wildfires, deadly floods, and devastating storms – the manifestations of extreme weather events have become a common phenomenon around the globe. In this blog post we give an overview of the extreme weather events occurring in 2023 and show why it is imperative that nations, communities, and individuals take concerted action to mitigate the root causes of climate change, adapt to its impacts, and work towards a more sustainable and resilient future.

The UN climate summit in Dubai concluded on 13 December after a 24-hour extension. While this year’s COP28 sends a strong signal overall, this should not distract from the weaknesses contained in the final decision, which could jeopardise implementation. The experts at Germanwatch have conducted an initial assessment of the negotiations, including the most important decisions and events. Their findings are presented here.

The climate crisis continues to intensify worldwide. However, the main culprits of the climate crisis have so far shown a lack of financial support for dealing with loss and damage. The decision to set up a loss and damage fund at COP27 was a historic milestone after several developed countries had blocked it for many years. At COP28 in Dubai, the fund must now be made operable and filled adequately.

Germany’s Ministry for Economic Affairs has announced new climate related sector guidelines for export credit guarantees and investment guarantees that would prevent support for almost all new fossil fuel projects from 1 November onwards. A limited number of gas projects may still receive support if they fulfil national security requirements or prove they can aid short term supply shortages, which is unlikely to be the case. Third countries are concerned about the potential drop in investment; this should be addressed by investing the billions now saved from servicing fossil fuel projects in clean energy instead.

In March 2023 the IDB Group published its “Paris Alignment Implementation Approach: Principles, Methodology, and Technical Guidance” (PAIA). The document is based on the joint MDB framework and lays out how the IDB plans to adapt the framework to its own institutional procedures. This blog post provides an overview on what are promising, concerning and unclear elements in the IDB Group’s general Paris alignment methodology.

As part of the European Green Deal, the EU has committed to making European product markets more sustainable, with circularity playing a key role. To achieve this goal, the EU is planning to introduce a Digital Product Passport for a wide range of products. In the future, the Digital Product Pass could foster new market opportunities for business models that strengthen the circular economy. To do so, it must be designed in such a way that it is particularly empowering for actors in the fields of product life cycle extension.

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.

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.

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.