According to the climate economist Edenhofer, the results of the climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh prevent failure, but also bring no real progress in the fight against the consequences of climate change. He advocates focusing less on conferences that always follow the same pattern.
According to researcher Ottmar Edenhofer, the climate conference in Egypt brought only moderate results. “Failure was prevented in Sharm el Sheikh. It was not a breakthrough and it was only a very, very moderate success for the climate,” said the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research on ZDF’s “heute journal”. He appealed not to focus too much on climate conferences. “We should look at the time in between, and we should now acknowledge that we not only have an ambition gap, we have a gaping implementation gap. And that needs to be addressed now.”
There are impulses for this from this conference. “But they have to be implemented seriously now. We’re running out of time and we can’t allow ourselves to start every climate conference with hopes that the big breakthrough will come. And then the whole thing ends in disappointment again .”
The two-week climate conference in Egypt only made real progress in the fight against the impending climate collapse in terms of financial aid for poorer countries. After decades of debates, the climate conference agreed for the first time on a common pot of money to compensate for climate damage in poorer countries. The new compensation fund is intended to cushion the inevitable consequences of global warming – such as increasingly frequent droughts, floods and storms, but also rising sea levels and desertification. Developing countries that are particularly at risk are to be favoured.
Edenhofer said of this fund: “It is not clear who is paying in. It is also not clear according to which criteria the money is to be distributed. So there is still a lot to negotiate.” The main emitters now know that they will have to pay for climate damage in the future. This would give them an incentive to avoid emissions. “But that’s really a very small step compared to what needs to be done.”