Today is the third day of COP28, and it feels as though—aside from some nice photos—nothing has changed compared to previous conferences. There are 97,
327 registrations and 1,293 reporters on site. The CO2 emissions from the participants’ air travel
alone would be an interesting figure.
At the start of the conference, Germany pledged 100 million USD to compensate for climate damage in particularly vulnerable countries. Everyone can ask themselves how “vulnerable countries” are defined—I’m thinking of the Ahr Valley, for instance.
Dubai is launching a new fund: 30 billion USD. The chairman of the supervisory board of the fund, named Alterra, will be COP President Sultan Al Jaber; he is already the head of the state-owned oil and gas company ADNOC. Despite the climate crisis, ADNOC wants to expand its oil operations. The chances of a unified phase-out plan are therefore slim. There is also a conflict of interest in the negotiations between ADNOC and OMV regarding a possible merger.
The “Dubai Fund” (via Blue Carbon) continues to invest in forests in Africa to achieve CO₂ offsets. But these offsets are only intended to sequester the last remaining CO₂.
The discussions are focused on “unabated fossil fuels”—that is, emissions from fossil fuels without carbon capture and storage (CCS). Power plants with CCS could continue to operate under certain conditions. By contrast, the expansion of renewable energy to 11,000 gigawatts by 2030 is less controversial. What’s important here is that renewable energy replaces fossil fuels and doesn’t merely meet increased energy demand.
Another issue is the Loss & Damage Fund, which is intended to provide financial support to countries—particularly in the Global South—that are disproportionately affected by the consequences of the climate crisis but have contributed little to it. The U.S. opposes compensation for damage caused by industrialized nations. The fund is expected to cause discontent once again, and early indications suggest it will play a significant role in the negotiations, particularly with the new EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, who has requested financial commitments for the fund.
The Chancellor’s speech—we’ve heard it all before. Constant repetition doesn’t change anything. A video message from the Chancellor would have sufficed (and would have been more climate-friendly). In any case, interest was low https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/cop28-in-dubai-olaf-scholz-auf-kurztrip-eine-erste-bilanz-der-weltklimakonferenz-a-03b5e593-1084-46a1-bf4e-c91925665d51.
Starting at the 1:20 mark, you can see that the hall is barely a quarter full.
But let’s take a look at the recipient countries of environmental protection funds. The complete list can be found here (why it wasn’t updated after 2017 remains a mystery): https://unfccc.int/climatefinance/fsf/recipients. If we now compare this list with Transparency International’s 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (https://www.transparency.de/cpi/cpi-2022/cpi-2022-tabellarische-rangliste), it essentially yields the following formula: The more corrupt a country is, the more funding it receives. If we also consider this interactive UN map, which shows how much donor countries have paid—and which includes EU recipient countries in the list—this is truly astonishing.
Let’s take another quick look at the Green Climate Fund. I’ll just select Paraguay, since I know the country well. To be honest, I’m not aware of any government reforestation program there. So, allegedly, Paraguay is said to have sequestered 23 million metric tons of CO2 through reforestation between 2015 and 2017. For this, it is receiving $50 million from the UN. (https://www.greenclimate.fund/project/fp121#documents). Only the UN knows what the “Gender Action Plan” has to do with the Climate Fund. Here’s a short article on the reality of reforestation in Paraguay (https://www.fes.de/themenportal-die-welt-gerecht-gestalten/artikel-in-die-welt-gerecht-gestalten/cop27-deforestation-in-paraguay-a-complex-problem).
Since results at the climate conference can only be achieved by unanimous consent, there will be no binding outcomes this time either.
That is why we at eMission-X are calling on the federal government to prioritize climate protection in Germany for the time being, especially in times of tight budgets.
Climate protection in Germany secures jobs, creates jobs, increases tax revenue, and protects the climate!