COP25, the 25th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Madrid, was unable to achieve the necessary results in year one after Fridays For Future. Two weeks of intensive negotiations at the summit, jointly hosted by Spain and Chile in Madrid, led only to minimal compromises. Rules for global CO2 trading (Article 6 of the Paris Climate Agreement) could not be agreed upon. During the negotiations, there was a risk of an agreement that would have allowed some countries to count emissions certificates from avoidance activities twice, or to carry over credits from the earlier Kyoto accounting period, which would massively undermine the achievement of the 1.5 oC target. In the end, the realisation prevailed that no agreement was the better outcome and that negotiations should be continued the following year.
The second major topic was financial support for particularly affected countries and communities, especially for climate impacts that occur despite adaptation efforts. Here too, no consensus could be reached on new financing mechanisms; only the option of access to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) was vaguely agreed upon, which now requires further specification and increased replenishment of this climate fund.
Equally, no real breakthrough was achieved in strengthening collective climate ambition towards the 1.5 oC target — the centrepiece of the legally binding yet voluntary Paris Agreement — partly due to political divisions, despite the hopes of many negotiators and the vehement demands of civil society. The Chilean conference presidency found itself unable, due to internal unrest, to present stricter climate protection targets as planned. Some 'climate change-sceptic' states, such as the USA, Saudi Arabia and Brazil, generally sought to undermine the agreement and prevent consensus.
One bright spot: the Green Deal presented by the new EU Commission to achieve 'net zero' greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 was received positively. As an intermediate step, the EU-wide reduction target for 2030 was raised from 40% to 50%. The challenge now is to make this climate plan — which spans all policy areas — more concrete, and it is the responsibility of all EU member states to make it relevant. Austria too would be called upon to honour its commitments and ensure that the National Energy and Climate Plan (NEKP) submitted to the EU Commission robustly delivers at least the required reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 36% by 2030 (calculated on the basis of 2005). The NEKP adopted by the government on 18 December 2020 does not yet claim to meet these requirements. The implementation of the Green Deal will in any case require a considerable further increase in ambition.
Despite the strong and committed presence and actions of civil society (with good Austrian participation), the Madrid negotiations were overall an inadequate start to 2020, the beginning of the implementation of the Paris Agreement. The task now is to raise climate ambition on both climate protection and adaptation in order to adequately address the climate crisis. As outlined in the Madrid closing communiqué, science has a particularly important role to play in generating evidence-based support for the evaluation of planned and implemented measures within the context of a climate-just transformation. In this spirit, CCCA continues to offer its support to Austrian decision-makers.
