How did the G20 in Naples on climate go?

The meeting of energy and environment ministers of the richest countries in the world has failed to reach an agreement on decarbonisation by 2025 and on containing climate change below 1.5 degrees centigrade

(photo : Qilai Shen / Bloomberg / Getty Images) Despite two days and two nights of negotiations, the G20 on environment, climate and energy in Naples can be said to have ended in failure. In fact, China and India have refused to sign the collective commitment to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees and eliminate coal as an energy source by 2025. The two points excluded from the climate agreement, reached by the ministers of the energy and the environment of the 20 richest countries in the world are essential to limit the rise in temperatures and avoid the disastrous consequences of global warming.

The Naples summit was supposed to relaunch and strengthen climate targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement, ahead of the UN COP26 climate summit, to be held in 100 days in Glasgow in the United Kingdom. According to environmental activists, the failure of the G20 to sign all the required points has put a halt to hopes for meaningful action in tackling climate change and reaching a meaningful agreement in Scotland. “The commitments made in Naples lack substance and ambition,” activists representing the Avaaz network told Reuters, “the G20 has failed in its intent. Italy's slogan was People, Planet, Prosperity, but today the G20 is delivering Pollution, Poverty and Paralysis to the world ".

Italy hosted the summit, as part of its rotating presidency of the G20, which was coordinated by the Minister of Ecological Transition Roberto Cingolani. According to the minister, the negotiations with China, India and Russia have been particularly difficult, because approving the two points in question would have involved a too drastic questioning of their economic model heavily based on fossil fuels. "Some countries wanted to go faster than agreed in Paris and limit temperatures to 1.5 degrees within a decade," he said in a press conference reported by Sole24ore, "but others, with more carbon-based economies, said they wanted to stick to to what was agreed in Paris ". Furthermore, according to what Cingolani said, the summit has not made any new financial commitments to support the transition to renewable energy in developing countries.

The decision to make more stringent and radical commitments in the struggle climate change now passes to the heads of state of the G20, who will meet in Rome in October. However, hopes of an environmental change remain low, in fact, according to the analyzes carried out by the Paris Equity Check group, in fact at least 4 G20 countries still have energy policies that could compromise the efforts of other states in the fight to reduce temperatures. According to the analysis, the energy development models of China, Brazil, Russia and Australia continue to depend totally on fossil fuels and, if not mitigated, would lead to a certain increase in temperatures above the 2 degrees established by the Paris agreement, up to a maximum of 5 degrees if other countries do not reduce their emissions.


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