India’s G20 presidency key to resolving climate finance issues: Germany’s climate envoy

New Delhi, Feb 15 (PTI) India’s G20 presidency is crucial for resolving climate finance issues and scaling up global mitigation efforts, Germany’s climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said here on Wednesday.

She also stressed the need to accelerate energy transition and “phase out all fossil fuels”.

“I think this G20 presidency is key for COP (Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and laying the groundwork for the COP…on finance issues but also on how we work together to scale up our efforts on mitigation,” Morgan said during a talk on the subject “From Sharm-el-Sheikh to Dubai”.

“We know that we are not on track to keep within the 1.5 degree limit and we are actually on (the path to) 2.6 (degrees Celsius), 2.8 (degrees Celsius). And, if you look at what happened here last summer, heatwaves… Cannot imagine what it was like here,” the Special Envoy for International Climate Action in the German Foreign Ministry said.

Keeping global temperature rise below the 1.5 degree limit (as compared to pre-industrial levels) is important to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Researchers say the majority of the world’s poorest countries are on course to meet the 1.5 degree Celsius limit, but without adequate levels of financial support they may pursue carbon-intensive development pathways through the 2020s and 2030s and overshoot their fair levels of emissions after their “currently fair” 2030 targets.

Earth’s global surface temperature has already increased by around 1.1 degrees Celsius as compared to the pre-industrial (1850 1900) average and this warming is considered the reason behind record droughts, wildfires and floods worldwide.

At COP27 in Egypt’s Sharm-el-Sheikh, India had stressed that only one fossil fuel cannot be made the villain and that meeting the long-term goal of the Paris Agreement requires “phase down of all fossil fuels”.

India’s call was backed by many developed and developing countries, including the EU and the US, but the final agreement did not essentially build on what was agreed upon in COP26.

COP 28 is scheduled to be held in Dubai later this year.