The environment and energy ministers of the G-20 countries were unable to agree on more ambitious goals to combat climate change at their two-day meeting in Naples.
The Italian Environment Minister Roberto Cingolani, host of the meeting, conceded on Friday evening at the conclusion of the meeting of the twenty major industrialized and emerging countries that there had been no consensus on the two crucial points of the 60 paragraphs comprehensive final declaration.
Italy is chairing the G-20 group this year and has been holding the meetings of the line ministers in various cities in the country for months in preparation for the G-20 summit on October 30 and 31 in Rome.
Matthias Rüb
Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.
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According to Cingolani, countries such as China, India, Brazil and Russia did not want to commit to achieving the goal of limiting global warming by a maximum of 1.5 degrees by 2030, which the EU, the United States, Canada and Japan are striving for. Instead, there was only a general declaration of intent by the G-20 states to the Paris Climate Agreement, which sets the goal of limiting global warming to below two degrees. Even the commitment to an earlier phase-out of coal-fired power generation, which the United States and the Europeans had urged, could not be included in the final document due to opposition from large coal producers such as Australia and major coal importers such as China.
In addition, an agreement on the subject of nature conservation failed. Cingolani said that only a few, and by no means all, states had spoken out in favor of placing 30 percent of land and sea areas under protection by the end of this decade. The head of the UN climate secretariat in Bonn, Patricia Espinosa, warned the G-20 states that because they are responsible for 80 percent of global economic output and 85 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, the countries of the group of states must work together towards the goal of reduction global warming set in. Espinosa called for the G-20 to show more determination at the world climate conference in Glasgow in November.
Germany was represented in Naples by the State Secretary in the Ministry of the Environment, Jochen Flasbarth (SPD). Flasbarth said that a lot of persuasion still had to be done in the emerging countries in terms of environmental, climate and nature protection. The views in countries such as China, India or Russia on the use of fossil fuels differed significantly from those in the EU and the United States. So far, the emerging countries have seen their role primarily in calling on the industrialized countries to do more to protect the climate. But now the G-20 states appeared “as a community of responsibility” for the first time and had “formulated the mission to fight climate change together”, Flasbarth drew a positive conclusion from the Naples meeting, regardless of the “weak” final document. In addition, everyone had committedto revise their national climate targets until the World Climate Conference in Glasgow.