Environment: UN climate chief warns negotiators against tactical games

Antalya. At the halfway point of the World Climate Conference in Turkey, UN climate chief Simon Stiell urges negotiators to be willing to compromise and ambitious.

“At the beginning of the second week, I call on the parties to quickly address the most difficult questions and avoid tactical delays,” said Stiell to the diplomats from almost 200 countries.

According to him, the conference will focus on the goal of stronger and faster electrification in all regions of the world as well as access to climate finance for vulnerable states. He admitted that the negotiations were complex.

"Almost 200 countries are working on 165 agenda items. Each country has its own perspective." The background is that at climate conferences, decisions must be made by consensus.

From the point of view of the German Greenpeace boss Martin Kaiser, the interim assessment of European engagement at COP31 is sobering. Environment Minister Carsten Schneider (SPD), who arrives on Monday, must work in the second and crucial week to ensure that three points are included in the final declaration: a green electrification target, concrete plans for the exit from oil, gas and coal and an end to forest destruction.

As far as electrification is concerned, the Australian negotiating presidency aims to increase the share of electricity in final energy consumption worldwide from 23 to 35 percent by 2035. This refers to all energy that is used for driving, heating, cooling or from the socket at home.

Greater electrification in the transport, building and industrial sectors brings with it major efficiency gains. According to calculations by the International Energy Agency (IEA), this could reduce harmful CO2 emissions by 40 percent by 2035 in the best case scenario. The more electricity comes from renewable sources such as sun, wind and hydropower, the better for climate protection.

During the dispute over money, things got quite emotional in the negotiating rooms in the first week. The African states in particular pushed for donor countries to provide clarity and record who is providing how much money, when, for their adaptation to the intensified climate crisis - and how this will be monitored transparently.

Your problem is a certain vagueness in the decision of the COP30 in Brazil. It was decided there that rich countries should triple their adjustment aid by 2035, but without a base year, without intermediate steps and also without a concrete final amount.

Sabine Minninger from Bread for the World expressed understanding for Africans' impatience: "The fact that people in Africa are plagued by severe droughts, crop failures and floods due to global warming is simply ignored by industrialized countries at the negotiating table because they do not want to talk about money."