climate

At the UN’s COP 22 climate conference in Marrakech, the international community closed ranks despite (or perhaps because of?) the election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president. Thanks to its swift ratification by currently more than 110 countries, negotiations on the technical implementation of the Paris Agreement could begin. The pace must increase significantly, however, if the 1.5°C limit is still to be met.

The UN climate summit in Marrakech from 7 to 18 November, is the crucial next step for operationalizing the Paris Agreement. Many controversial issues such as damages caused by climate change and financing for the poorest countries are on the agenda.

The UN climate conference in Warsaw was the COP with the lowest expectations ever and lived up to that in every respect. What were the issues discussed and decisions taken? Who is to blame for the stalemate?

The system of climate politics is based on the faith in market equilibrium, and on the economic theory of the right to pollute which assumes that competition on pollution permits market will lead to the optimalization of the costs of dealing with pollution, and eventually will lead to reduction of discharges to the environment. It looks great in theory but so much the worse for reality. Read the analysis and get acquainted with the whole English issue of the Green News.

From a sheer climate protection perspective, various experts claim that the outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference has been a failure. Yet politically, it remains unclear whether Copenhagen can be called a failure, or whether it can be called a step forward. This, it seems, much depends on the regional and national perspectives. Two months after the Copenhagen climate summit, this paper sheds some light on the different regional and national evaluations of the conference and analyzes how perceptions on the outcome of the conference vary between key countries and regions.

The Heinrich Böll Foundation is a German Green political foundation that works in over 60 countries in the spheres of sustainability, cross-cultural dialogue, and education. Common European values, gender democracy and energy transition are both central tenets and cross-cutting themes for the Warsaw Office.