Oxfam and Greenpeace Criticize G20’s Climate Change Policy

HAVANA TIMES — Oxfam and Greenpeace heavily criticized the Group of Twenty’s (G20) climate change policy, coinciding with the summit of leaders of State and Government which concluded Monday in Hangzhou, in eastern China, reported DPA.

“That G20 countries aspire to ratify the climate protection agreement signed in Paris shouldn’t be seen a success, but something obvious,” the humanitarian organization Oxfam’s spokesman, Jörn Kalinski, told DPA. After all, the agreement was signed in 2015.

Oxfam was disappointed by the fact that the group of the world’s leading industrialized and developing nations hadn’t made any new promises to reduce their greenhouse effect gas emissions.

National plans aren’t enough to achieve the objective set to reduce global warming by two degrees centigrade, he pointed out. “Thus, the climate change agreement will quickly become wastepaper with catastrophic consequences for the poorest nations in the world who are most affected by climate change,” warned Oxfam.

The organization also found it unacceptable that measures to establish G20’s old commitments to get rid of subsidies to sectors who negatively affect the climate haven’t been approved,” Kalinski said. The document repeats former promises but doesn’t specify target dates.

Greenpeace was also critical given the fact that, in spite of it being a good sign that G20 countries want to ratify the Paris agreements “as soon as possible”, “concrete requirements are still missing, such as that of eliminating subsidies to the coal industry.”

If the next host of G20 in 2017 in Hamburg is Angela Merkel, who wants to transform the group into a real precursor against climate change, she should be the first one to say goodbye to the coal industry in her own country, Greenpeace expert Tobias Münchmeyer says.