International Environmental Policy

The Katowice climate package brings minor progress, but COP 24 failed to deliver on the most fundamental issues such as raising ambition of national contributions, implementing human rights, and ensuring support for developing countries.

Obviously, the destiny of sustainable transition of Western Balkan and Eastern European economies is above all in control of the respective countries themselves. Still, the EU is in a decisive position to create conditions for a dynamic of change and a successful modernisation.

Agriculture and climate change are closely linked, and soils store vast amounts of carbon. But what happens when carbon sequestration in the fields of smallholders becomes a new focus in climate and agricultural policies? 

The Katowice UN Climate Change Conference will take place in Katowice from the 3rd till the 14th of December 2018. 

The IPCC Special Report on 1.5 opts for a rigorous interpretation of the 1.5 limit on global warming. It has good reasons to do so: "Overshooting" that target risks irreversible impacts and damage for societies and ecosystems, and increases reliance on unproven, high-risk geoengineering technologies.

This dossier aims to give a broad overview of exciting new and old pathways towards a climate-just 1.5°C world. Pathways that are grounded in radical, social and environmental justice-based agendas for political change.

A new climate agreement intended to ensure “carbon-neutral growth” in international aviation could lead to a massive increase in demand for problematic offsetting projects.

On paper, almost every government in the world is committed to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and keeping global temperatures limited to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. But too many governments, parroting the oil and gas industry's misleading claims, are actually supporting the expansion of fossil fuel production.

Rather than allowing itself to be dragged into Donald Trump’s destructive trade games, the European Union should turn them on their head, by introducing a CO2 levy, including border adjustment. Such a response would help protect the environment and boost the EU's own international clout.

The infrastructure projects needed to forestall catastrophic climate change are rarely attractive investments for the private sector or even most governments. That means development banks have a crucial role to play.