SHARM EL-SHEIKH. The echo of G20 in Bali bounces back to Sharm El-Sheikh and restarts a climate deal that seemed to have stalled in the face of a series of crossed vetoes, three days after the closure of the 27th United Nations climate conference. The final declaration of the Big 20 meeting in Indonesia surprised even the most optimistic of the Sherpas involved in the COP27 negotiating tables. Starting with the recognition that the energy crisis due to fossil fuels is gripping the world.
As a consequence, the G20 leaders mandated their ministers present in Sharm El-Sheikh to “urgently raise the ambition on mitigation and adaptation”, but also on climate finance and loss and damagelosses and damages. The G20 then reiterated the need to revise the climate plans for 2030 to align them with the Paris Agreement, given that the ones currently adopted put us on track for 2.4°C by 2100, instead of 1.5°C established in Paris.
Just this morning a group of young activists had protested within COP27 to defend the goal of 1.5 degrees, which by now seemed to be relegated to the dream book by most delegations. On the other hand, a precise indication comes from Bali: the leaders of the G20 have reaffirmed theirs commitment to the 1.5°C limit, recognizing that the climatic impacts will be much lower the more the increase in average temperature is kept within this limit. So they “decided to continue efforts to” succeed. And this should definitively close the debate.
From Bali de profundis, at least in words, also for i fossil fuels. G20 leaders recognize that the insecurity and volatility of fossil fuels, gas above all, is having a strong impact on households and businesses and that therefore the solution lies in accelerating the transition to clean and secure energy. So the road is marked: renewable energies and energy efficiency.
It can celebrate too Mia Mottleythe Prime Minister of Barbados which at Cop27, supported by France, had proposed the so-called Bridgetown Agenda to reform the climate financein order to avoid indebtedness of vulnerable countries: the G20 has in fact asked the multilateral development banks to take a step forward, precisely in the wake of the Bridgetown initiative, stating that the independent review of the G20 on their lending practices will be updated by spring 2023.
In short, from Bali, even on the climate, there is an encouragement to those who believe in multilateralism, to sit around a table, even if there are 198 of them (as in the case of Cop27), to look for a solution that brings everyone together. Nineteen of the G20 countries have reiterated that this cannot be an era in which conflicts are resolved by war. And they were clearly addressing the 20th member of the club, la Russia of Putin.
The next few hours will tell us whether the Indonesian leaders’ accord will produce results underway at the Sharm El-Sheikh convention center.
