Climate

This year will be key for future climate policy and especially for sustainable finance in Germany and Europe. Sustainable Finance plays a crucial role in improving climate protection and sustainable growth. To this end, Germanwatch joined forces with the Alliance for Corporate Transparency in order to push towards greater corporate responsibility and disclosure requirements to meet the EU and Paris climate targets. This article kicks off and introduces our briefing series "Full Disclosure: Monthly Briefing on EU Corporate Transparency Regulation", in which we aim to shed light on the need for and benefits of forward-looking reporting requirements in a changing EU regulatory environment.

The Coronavirus pandemic has delayed the collection of evidence in the trial between the Peruvian farmer Saúl Luciano Lliuya and the German utility RWE at the Upper State Court in Hamm (Germany). Nevertheless, a new scientific study is providing credence to the legal claim: a prestigious team of researchers has used climate models to demonstrate that the risk of glacial lake flooding affecting the city of Huaraz is almost entirely due to anthropogenic climate change.

Bonn/Berlin (25th Jan. 2021). Vulnerable people in developing countries suffer most from extreme weather events like storms, floods and heat waves, while the impacts of climate change are visible around the globe. Being the deadliest and costliest tropical cyclone in the South-West Indian Ocean, tropical Cyclone Idai was labelled “one of the worst weather-related catastrophes in the history of Africa” by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

Against the background of the social, economic and political COVID-19 effects on India, all business-as-usual scenarios for economic development and emission trends of Indian and resilient society building are outdated. There is both the possibility of an accelerated structural change to renewable energy, away from fossil fuels and combustion engines and the danger of a massive rebound effect for the emissions path. The same width of possibilities exists between society-wide resilience building and intensified inequality.
The question of what India's recovery strategy - and international support - will look like will create central path dependencies. Especially now, in the new challenge of the Corona crisis, India needs reliable and strong partners such as Germany and the EU to enter into more sustainable pathway through the recovery packages. Strategies for green and resilient recovery and NDC implementation and increase go hand in hand.

The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2021 published today paints a mixed picture of progress by the European Union (EU) on climate action. While the Scandinavian EU countries, Portugal and the EU as a whole rank high on the index with relatively good indicators, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic stand out as outliers on climate progress within the bloc. In the overall ranking, the EU has improved from the 22nd place last year to the 16th place this year, almost exclusively thanks to a much better rated climate policy. The CCPI analyzes and compares climate protection across 57 countries (plus EU as a whole) with the highest emissions, which together account for 90 percent of global emissions.

The Climate Change Performance Index compares 57 countries and the EU in the areas of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Renewable Energies, Energy Use and Climate Policy, thus providing a comprehensive overview of the current efforts and progress of the countries analyzed. Besides, it measures how well countries are on track to meet the global goals of the Paris Agreement by evaluating the current status and future targets of each category with reference to a well-below 2°C pathway. This brochure explains the background and methodology of the Climate Change Performance Index.

The G20 countries are responsible for around 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Last year, energy-related CO2 emissions in the G20 fell slightly for the first time, by 0.1% after a rise of 1.9% in 2018, without an economic crisis as a trigger. The key to these initial successes is the continuing boom in renewable energies.

On Tuesday, 6th of October, the European Parliament will vote on the EU Climate Law and set its position on the EU 2030 climate target. In a letter to the Members of the European Parliament the plaintiffs of the People's Climate Case urge them to decide on higher emission cuts by 2030 and to support access to justice for citizens.