Open letter: The G20 can alter the course of our planet’s destiny
2023 was the warmest year in recorded history, and July 22nd, 2024, the hottest day. Climate impacts are felt across the globe, with developing countries experiencing disproportionate effects on their ecosystems and communities. Yet current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) put us on track for more than double the warming we’ve already experienced.
Many countries are being forced to respond to climate impacts at the expense of investing in mitigation and climate resilient development. Some are facing negative growth scenarios as investment is outstripped by the cost of impacts. Climate action is an economic imperative. No country should have to choose between fighting poverty and fighting for the planet. No country can be left behind.
With around 80% of global emissions and 85% of global GDP, the G20 has the power, resources and responsibility to alter the course of our planet’s destiny. The G20 can and must take the lead, using their leadership to ensure that adequate resources are directed towards supporting developing countries in building resilience and advancing their energy transitions, including through updated NDCs and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs).
In particular, the UN Secretary General has called for the advanced economies of the G20 to go furthest, fastest, and show climate solidarity. This solidarity should be reflected in concrete actions that support developing countries in their climate commitments. Even those who have been taking the lead should not be complacent, and are expected to come forward with their highest ambition in domestic action and international cooperation.
Climate change exacerbates and acts as a multiplier to existing crises. We welcome a focus on peace, as war costs lives, and diverts funding from other critical needs, and military emissions are insufficiently accounted for.
As the costs of climate change rise and we come together to set a new collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG), we must work together to deliver as much money as we can to tackle the climate crisis. We must approach COP29 in a spirit of collaboration. Trillions of dollars annually are needed to meet developing countries’ evolving needs, as well as a redesigned international finance system that addresses long-standing inequities and mobilizes resources for climate action at a much wider scale. We must address unsustainable debt burdens, align all financial flows with the Paris Agreement, and advance the commitment to equity at the heart of the Agreement.
We must find a common understanding of what can be counted towards the achievement of the NCQG.
We must start with the delivery of existing commitments including to double adaptation funding, to prioritize the needs of the particularly vulnerable and those with significant capacity constraints, and to swiftly operationalize the fund for responding to loss and damage, prioritizing grant-based and concessional financing.
We urge the G20 to lead all parties to collectively:
a. Increasing the overall pool of financing for climate action from all sources.
b. Shifting away urgently from investments in fossil fuels.
c. Addressing debt constraints and the high cost of capital that hinders many countries’ ability to achieve their climate change and development goals.
d. Delivering on commitments to identify, remove, reduce or repurpose fossil subsidies.
e. Implementing innovative forms of finance that are scalable, fair, and easy to collect and administer. We support discussions to explore the effective taxation of high-net worth individuals.
f. Introducing enabling conditions to stimulate Paris-aligned investment and harness the private sector, while recognising the limits to the private sector’s role.
g. Increasing accessibility for developing countries, particularly the least developed countries and small island developing states, by simplifying and harmonizing procedures and shortening the time between approval and delivery of finance.
h. Delivering urgent international finance architecture reform, drawing on the Bridgetown Initiative, the Paris Pact for People and Planet, and the Expert Review on Debt, Climate and Nature. This must include reviewing investment strategies and de-risking procedures to avoid disadvantaging vulnerable economies, and ensuring credit rating agencies reflect the risk of high-carbon investments.
i. Achieving robust standards on carbon markets that deliver on the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement and set a benchmark on high quality credits, ensure strong rules and guidance to protect environmental integrity and the Principles of High Integrity Markets, and support developing countries’ capacity building.
10. We must all implement the agreement in Dubai to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels while tripling renewable energy and doubling energy efficiency, and pursue an equitable transition, ensuring every community has clean energy access. The energy commitments set out in the Global Stocktake (GST) decision are a set of commitments that will save lives.
11. Finance is crucial to a truly global energy transition that leaves no one behind. G20 members can help by increasing public finance investment in the transition, closing loopholes in international fossil fuel investment commitments and freeing up investment to be repurposed for renewables and energy efficiency.
12. The IEA has stated that there is no need for the development of new long lead time fossil fuel infrastructure in a 1.5°C world. All countries, but particularly G20 members, should immediately stop any further permitting of, and investments in, fossil fuel development and infrastructure.
13. The G20 must lead the way by cutting methane emissions from fossil fuel operations, working with producer countries to reduce methane emissions, and supporting UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory. We must end the use of enclosed combustors, where they are used to hide emissions.
14. We must focus near-term efforts on proven and cost-effective technologies, not the promise of technologies that remain unproven at scale. Emission abatement technologies which do not significantly harm the environment exist only at very limited scale and should be focused on reducing emissions from hard to abate sectors. Removal technologies need to contribute to global negative emissions.
15. This round of NDCs is the last chance for us to get on track to limit global warming to 1.5°C and the leadership of the G20 will determine our ability to do so. We call on the G20 to commit to submit 1.5°C-aligned NDCs by early 2025 and encourage submissions ahead of COP29.
16. G20 NDCs must demonstrate how they will deliver on the GST energy commitments and should set out time-bound plans for the transition. All NDCs must be 1.5ºC aligned, economy wide, cover all gasses and sectors and contain absolute reduction targets. NDCs must not just be words on paper, but integrated across government plans and spending. We encourage countries to measure, track and reduce imported and exported emissions, particularly those of fossil exporters and those with high levels of imports that drive deforestation or enlarge transport and overseas industrial emissions.
17. We also urge the G20 to come forward by the end of 2024 with new or revised 1.5-aligned long-term low emissions development strategies (LT-LEDS), which set out a pathway to net-zero by 2050 at the latest and to net negative emissions thereafter.
18. Finance is key to delivery. NDCs can showcase commitments and plans to potential investors, but many ambitious NDCs have so far gone unfunded. Ambition must be rewarded, not punished, through increased financial support and investment. Capacity building and technology transfer should not be left behind; these means of implementation are key to achieving the goals of many NDCs.
19. We call on the G20 to submit accurate and comprehensive biennial transparency reports this year, and also stress the importance for all Parties to do so.
20. We encourage all countries to integrate gender equality, protection and promotion of human rights, the representation and participation of indigenous peoples and local communities, and empowerment of children and youth into their NDCs and LT-LEDS and other national climate change policies, plans, strategies, and action, including to highlight the importance of gender-disaggregated data to support effective mitigation actions.
21. Insufficient mitigation results in increased adaptation costs. In line with the Global Goal on Adaptation, we must increase adaptation ambition, action and support.
22. We must all ensure that the UAE Framework on Global Climate Resilience translates to action at the regional, national and community levels. We must deliver solutions in key areas identified in the framework, including water, agriculture, health, biodiversity and infrastructure and human settlements. By 2030, all parties must have National Adaptation Plans that form blueprints and investment plans to enhance resilience, increase adaptive capacity, and reduce vulnerability, and we encourage the G20 to support and cooperate with developing countries to do so.
23. Adaptation finance will have to be significantly scaled up to support the development and implementation of NAPs. The High-Level Ministerial Dialogue at CMA6 must generate a step-change in the mobilization of adaptation finance.
24. To effectively plan and inform adaptation action through NAPs, avoid maladaptation, and implement adaptation priorities swiftly, we call for greater access to data and climate information, including for Early Warning Systems by 2027.
25. We urge G20 to align adaptation initiatives with the Sustainable Development Goals, and to promote the use of knowledge hubs and country platforms to integrate climate adaptation into national and sectoral development plans and coordinate funding.
As members of the High Ambition Coalition, we look forward to collaborating with the G20 to deliver a safer and more just future for us all.
H.E. Leonore Gewessler, Federal Minister for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology, Austria
H.E. Maria Heloisa Rojas Corradi, Environment Minister, Chile
H.E. Kai Mykkänen, Minister of Climate and the Environment, Finland
H.E. Eamon Ryan, Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications, Ireland
H.E. Ali Mohamed, Special Climate Change Envoy, Kenya
H.E. Dr Michael Bizwick Usi, Vice President of the Republic of Malawi also serving as the Minister for Natural Resources and Climate Change
H.E. Gustav Aitaro, Minister of State of the Republic of Palau
H.E. Bremity Lakjohn, Minister in Assistance to the President and Minister of the Environment, Republic of the Marshall Islands
H.E. Toeolesulusulu Cedric P S Schuster, Minister for Natural Resources and Environment and Samoa Tourism Authority, Samoa
H.E. Shawn Edward, Minister for Education, Sustainable Development, Innovation, Science, Technology and Vocational Training of St Lucia
H.E. John Salong, Minister of Climate Change Adaptation, Meteorology, Geo-Hazards, Environment, Energy & National Disaster Management Office, the Republic of Vanuatu