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G20 ENVIRONMENT, CLIMATE AND ENERGY MEETING: WHICH PRIORITIES?
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The G20 Environment and Energy Ministers are meeting in Naples on 22-23 July. How to achieve the ecological transition?
How to tackle climate change? What are the opportunities of a sustainable and inclusive recovery?
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Reconciling environmental protection
with economic growth and social justice; safeguarding ecosystems and preventing
biodiversity loss; prioritising and implementing low-carbon, green growth
policies in the post-pandemic recovery packages; fostering the energy
transition towards renewables to reduce global emissions: these are some of the
objectives of the Ministerial Meeting taking place in Naples on 22nd-23rd
of July.
On these issues the Italian
Presidency has made proposals to urge the international community towards more
ambitious objectives.
What can the G20 really do to lay
the foundations of a truly sustainable recovery? What concerted actions can be
taken to build a low-carbon and climate-resilient socio-economic system?
Accounting for nearly 90% of global
GDP, around
two-thirds of the world population and around 80% of greenhouse gas emissions,
the G20 countries are called to play a significant role in limiting global
warming to 1.5°C and in finding viable solutions to fight climate change.
The Ministerial’s work will be divided
into three macro-areas:
1) biodiversity, natural capital
protection, and ecosystems restoration; 2) efficient use of resources and
circular economy; 3) green finance.
The last issue, green finance, took
centre stage at the International Conference on Climate Change, held on the 11th
of July in Venice, during the G20 Finance Ministerial Meeting. G20 leaders showed
growing awareness around the need to make the private sector a crucial partner as
investments needed to ‘green’ the global economy exceed the public funds
available by a wide margin. The Italian Presidency put the spotlight on the financial
support to the green transition by establishing the Sustainable
Finance Working Group (SFWG), which should also aim to engage private
investors and better define the role development and regional banks can play in
supporting poor and developing countries.
Although the G20 countries seem to
be aligned on the target of carbon neutrality and low-carbon economy over the
next decades, some divergences persist on key issues such as the carbon border
adjustment mechanism: does it raise the risk of “green protectionism”? How to
design it to make it compatible with international trade rules?
On these and other pressing global
environmental issues, the T20 — and particularly the Task Force on Climate, Sustainable Energy and
Environment coordinated by ISPI — has collected its policy recommendations in a statement submitted to
the G20 Environment and Energy Ministers.
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T20 RECOMMENDATIONS TO G20 LEADERS
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Fighting Climate Change and Re-launching the Global Economy: The Challenges for the G20
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Climate change, biodiversity loss and sustainable growth are long-standing global challenges. Today they are even more crucial, given the crisis brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, which calls for making the much-needed recovery in the global economy compatible with action to meet, exceed and improve agreed environmental targets and compatible with the planetary boundaries.
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"The
number of people facing hunger increased by 120-160 million in 2020, a
staggering increase of 20 percent. The world was already off-track to end
hunger and malnutrition by 2030 before the pandemic, with
hunger on the rise and climate change impacts significantly slowing
agricultural productivity growth. Building climate-resilient food systems and
reducing GHG emissions from agriculture are thus urgent priorities. An
important first step is a concerted G20 effort to redirect the more than US$700
billion per annum in agricultural support measures toward R&D in
productivity enhancing and emission-reducing technologies, and incentives to
producers and consumers to adopt sustainable and healthy practices."
Johan
Swinnen,
Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) & Global Director, Systems Transformation, CGIAR
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"Coal
power generation is the single biggest cause of greenhouse gas emissions. With
the tailwind of renewable energies getting cheaper, technological progress,
e.g. with respect to batteries, unused opportunities, e.g. in the field of
energy efficiency, and political commitments to carbon neutrality, the G20
should commit to transitioning away from coal. With the painful impacts of
climate change in mind, the G20 could send a signal of hope by agreeing on a
concrete date for a phase out of direct and indirect fossil fuel subsidies, as
well as on a stop of international investments in new coal power plants."
Camilla
Bausch,
Scientific & Executive Director, Ecologic Institute Europe
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"The
unprecedented heat, wildfires, floods, and other extreme weather events in
North America, Europe and most other G20 members during the past month require far
more ambitious action from G20 environment, climate, and energy ministers on
July 22-23 than they have ever taken before. They are unlikely to provide
enough to control the climate change disaster currently at hand. But following
the example of their G7 colleagues on May 21, who made 183 commitments, they
should set up their leaders’ Rome summit for success by agreeing to immediately
stop the loss of nature and biodiversity as essential carbon sinks, give
developing countries well over $100 billion a year in climate finance from
their own governments and the international financial institutions they
control, stop international financing for unabated coal, and phase out its
domestic use by 2030."
John
Kirton, Co-Founder and Director of the G20 and the G7 Research Group, University of Toronto
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ISPI - Italian Institute for International Political Studies
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Via Clerici, 5 - 20121 Milan
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ispi.segreteria@ispionline.it
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