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Opinion | Cop28: to ramp up climate action, we must all play our part
- The best way to achieve a climate-neutral, resilient future is to accelerate the global green energy transition and ensure a united response to the crisis through more funding and investments in climate partnerships
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A farmer in Niger whose fields have dried up due to the heat. A father in Palau who does not know whether his house will still be standing when his children are grown up – or whether rising sea levels will swallow up his village. Mayors in Spain, Germany or Lithuania who have to find a way to protect their towns and cities from a water shortage and ever more dangerous floods.
Regardless of which country you look at, one crisis is evident everywhere: the climate crisis. This crisis is the greatest security challenge of our age. It affects us all – with varying degrees of severity but the same relentlessness.
What gives me hope is that we have the knowledge, technology and instruments to contain the climate crisis together. What we need is political will.
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In 2015, the international community showed this will and paved the way for a new, climate-neutral world by adopting the Paris Agreement. Almost 170 countries set themselves ambitious climate targets back then. The expansion of renewable energies has accelerated dramatically.
However, as we come together for the climate change conference in Dubai, we will also know that we find ourselves in a race against time – and we have been too slow to date.
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Cop28 is a huge opportunity to pick up the pace, an opportunity we should seize together by forming alliances among countries at the forefront of climate action. For, in Dubai, we will carry out the Global Stocktake, agreed in Paris, for the first time. This will allow us to review our progress towards reaching the targets set in Paris and to determine where we have to step things up.
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