COP25 – A lost opportunity?

This article is written by our Dele’Mates from the second week of COP25.

After a week of intense negotiations, it was time for the High-Level segment and more closed negotiations. Ministers arrived at the conference center to give short statements and continue working on several unresolved items from week one (e.g. Article 6, Finance, Loss and Damage). Furthermore, high-level speakers such as Greta Thunberg and Al Gore gave powerful statements about the urgency of the climate crisis. The two weeks were not only different in terms of negotiations, we also had two new Dele’Mates joining our team, Hugo and Venni. Throughout the second week, our team did not only get to experience the typical second-week tiredness from sleep deprivation and running around the massive conference center, but also the dramatic turns and unexpected events that took place.

The Climate finance project

This project aims to help future economic and political stakeholders understand some of the key issues regarding climate finance. It will focus on climate change’s financial impact, carbon risks, international financial institutions, capital markets’ climate-related investments, international financial governance institutions, fiscal and monetary climate policies, or monitoring systems for assessing climate-compatible investments.

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I got a feeling! – A quick wrap up of the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue 2019

This article is written by Mona Hosseini.

The Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue 2019 has been a intense two days conference gathering more than 2,000 participants from more than 90 countries. Among these participants 50 ministers from the Global North and Global South have attended the BETD 2019. In many panels with a female quota of 60% the civil society and international leaders have discussed the urgent questions of a global energy transition. The German government has put itself into the scene even though its most recent climate policy regarding a fossil fuel phase-out is outrageous.

COP24 fails to adopt IPCC report, what does it mean for Nepal?

This article is written by Pramisha Thapaliya.

After two week of the UN climate talks, disputes over a key climate target put Nepal’s glaciers at risk.

The parties failed to reach consensus to welcome the recent IPCC report at COP24. Keeping the climate crisis in view, at COP21, parties agreed to limit the temperature to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels; and to limit the increase to 1.5ºC. And during COP 24 at Katowice, parties are working together to create Paris Rulebook, for guiding implementation of Paris Agreement.

COP24: a toolkit for a better, faster, stronger climate finance?

This article is written by Noémie Robin.

Since the Paris Agreement, it has been agreed that whether they are developed or developing, all countries have to fight against climate change and have to put efforts into the transition toward a low-carbon and resilient economy. Indeed all States need to be involved, because if change occurs only in developed countries, the result would not be enough to reach the target of 1.5°C presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their last report in October. But as the article 9 of the Paris Agreement stated, it has been recognized that it would be difficult for developing countries to support the cost of their transition while they do not have the same financial resources or capacities as developed countries. Thus, developed countries have the duty to financially assist developing countries with respect to mitigation and adaptation and they shall lead the climate finance mobilization from a variety of sources, like public funds. In order to insure this transition, $100 billion per year by 2020 have been pledge from industrialized countries to help the poorer countries to achieve their transition toward a green economy.

The highs and lows of COP24

This article is written by Sarah Siemers.

This year’s climate conference in Poland, also known as COP24, was again of great importance. The direction for the further course of global change was meant to be set there and the task was to draw up a set of rules to implement the Paris Agreement.

On Science and Climate Change, a complicated relationship

This article is written by Shu Ting Julie Zhang. 

When Saudi Arabia calls for waiting on including the 6th IPCC report, because of some “gaps” in the 5th report, it makes me wonder what image of scientists people have. Science is no absolute verity and will never be. Experiments and predictions, especially about climate change, can be wrong. There are always uncertainties and gaps, do you remember Popper’s concept of falsifiability?