War, climate change, species extinction: How do you deal with several crises at the same time? The question looms over the meeting of G7 Energy, Environment and Climate Ministers. Environmental activists are calling for significant progress.
According to Climate Protection and Economics Minister Robert Habeck, the G7 countries, as strong industrial nations, must make their contribution in order to promote the phase-out of coal-fired power generation and the transport turnaround.
Habeck said on Thursday that the meeting of the G7 energy, environment and climate ministers in Berlin would discuss how they could also “play a certain pioneering role” in this regard. The ministers will discuss climate protection, energy security and the preservation of biodiversity until Friday. Environmental activists called for significant progress in international climate protection.
The G7 group of important democratic economic powers includes Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, the USA and Great Britain. Germany currently holds the presidency.
The global crises should not be played off against each other, Habeck warned. The “major structural crises of our time” – the energy supply, global warming and the ecological crises, especially with the loss of biodiversity – must instead be solved together, said the Green politician. Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) made it clear that the states had no choice: there was neither time nor resources to solve the crises one after the other.
Greenpeace calls for more climate protection
The environmental organization Greenpeace demanded clear commitments from the G7 ministers. “In order to secure peace in Europe and worldwide, to counteract starvation and to protect the climate,” Habeck must now persuade the ministers of the G7 countries at the meeting in Berlin to decide to completely phase out fossil-based electricity by 2035 and eliminate dependence of fossil gas as soon as possible, said the executive director of Greenpeace Germany, Martin Kaiser, the German press agency.
Habeck described the “emergency” that was also triggered by the Russian war in Ukraine, which is partly due to the security of supply with fossil energies, as the first step in phasing out fossil energies altogether. “What we are experiencing at the moment is an acceleration of the ecological transformation,” said Habeck.
Lemke hopes that the meeting will provide “strong signals” for the climate and energy crisis as well as for the issue of biodiversity and marine protection. She wants binding standards for deep-sea mining, for a protection agreement for the Antarctic and for the pollution crisis. The minister called for the financial framework for measures to protect biodiversity to be increased.
At the end of the conference, a joint final paper is to be published on Friday. Habeck, Lemke and representatives of Great Britain and Japan want to speak at a press conference.
