G20 climate talks fail to reach joint communique

Environment ministers from the Group of 20 (G20) developed economies meeting in Indonesia for talks on global climate action have been unable to agree on a joint communique.

Sources say some countries, including China, objected to the language used for climate targets and the war in Ukraine.

The countries objected to previously agreed language in the Glasgow climate pact and past G20 agreements on efforts to limit global average temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Indonesia’s Environment Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar had started the meeting by urging countries to cut emissions and prevent the planet from being pushed to a point “where no future will be sustainable”.

“It is our responsibility to be part of the solution. We build bridges, not walls,” she said.

Siti had earlier said she hoped a joint communique would be signed by the end of the day, but made no mention of it in her press conference later on Wednesday.

Siti added that failure to work together to cut emissions would push the planet toward “unchartered territory”.

Environment officials from Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, South Korea, and U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry are attending the talks.

Indonesia as current G20 chair has invited representatives from the African Union to join the talks for the first time, said Siti, adding that voices from all countries, regardless of their wealth and size, must be heard.

Also in attendance is Alok Sharma, president of last year’s 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), who said the war in Ukraine had increased the urgency of a shift to renewable sources of energy.

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“The current energy crisis has demonstrated the vulnerability of countries relying on fossil fuels controlled by hostile actors,” Sharma said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Climate security has become synonymous with energy security and the chronic threat of climate change is not going away,” Sharma added.

The G20 climate meeting comes as extreme weather events – fires, floods, and heatwaves – pummel several parts of the world, including unprecedented flooding in Pakistan in recent weeks that has killed at least 1,000 people.

Scientists say most such extreme weather events are attributable to human-caused climate change and will only increase in severity and frequency as the globe edges closer to the warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The COP27 climate summit will be held in Egypt this November.

Zainab Sa’id