Climate crisis, climate policy - without international partnerships we will not be able to keep the 2 degree limit

The COP 25 world climate summit in Madrid was attracting particular attention this year; weather extremes are on the rise. Science has long since defined what the goal must be: In no case more than 2 degrees, better only 1.5 degrees, warming by the end of the century, or even less. At present, however, we are practically and politically on a 3 to 4 degree corridor. Our project partner Germanwatch sees a solution in international partnerships for climate protection.

Since August 2019, the Munich Re Foundation has been supporting the PAREMIA project of Germanwatch, which aims to promote international climate partnerships (partnerships for ambitious resilience and mitigation action). Based on the "NDC Partnership Programme" of the German Federal Ministry for Development and Cooperation (BMZ), the climate protection and climate adaptation plans of selected countries are analysed in detail and compared with the two Germanwatch indices "Climate Risk Index" and "Climate Policy Performance Index". The result is a template with instructions on how climate policy and climate protection practice can be improved in the respective country.

With this evaluation, the consultants of Germanwatch seek to talk to the representatives of the pre-selected countries, for example at the COP 25 in Madrid in December 2019, to discuss together where there are gaps and potentials. Recommendations for action can then be submitted to the BMZ or – in the best case – concrete joint, improving projects can already be envisaged. In Madrid meetings were held with delegates from India, South Africa and Chile. The project team acts as a mediator between BMZ, BMU and the selected countries.

It is important that these meetings are attended not only by advisors and political representatives but also by participants from civil society, academia and the private sector. They are often better able to report on real projects and provide support in managing them. In Madrid, for example, Sanjey Vashist from the Climate Action Network South Asia explained, how the Indian state of Sikkim can serve as a model. The entire agricultural sector here has already been converted to organic farming and has thus been able to reduce its CO2 emissions considerably. But Sikkim himself still has a lot to do on the resilience side. These tasks include solutions to the massive water shortage for many months of the year and solutions to the danger of glacial lake outbursts, which may occur due to the increasing glacial melting.

But Germanwatch also emphasizes that these partnerships are not one-way streets. India is clearly ahead of Germany in the area of "Green Urban Mobility", for example. The figures for e-cars are more promising, sharing approaches more mature and planning processes for a holistically sustainable urban mobility concept much more ambitious than in Germany. Here we can learn a lot from the ideas from India. Evidence of this is also provided by the recently published ranking of the Climate Action: Germany's climate policy is currently rated as insufficient here, while India – not least because of the points listed above – is on a 2-degree path.

The results of the analyses and the corresponding recommendations for action will be published in the first half of 2020. They then provide a breeding ground for a more ambitious climate policy – supported by international partnerships. Then there will be more hope for the compliance with the 2 degree limit.