#24 Berliner Klimagespräch: Climate Justice Needs Financing

At the #24 Berlin Climate Talk on 19 September 2024, international experts from politics and civil society discussed how a new climate finance target, to be decided at the UN climate conference COP, can contribute to global justice. The key questions of the discussion were how the climate financing goal can meet the needs of developing countries and where the funds must come from to ensure fair financing by those responsible for the climate crisis.

The next climate change conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, will take place under the banner of climate financing. As stated in the Paris Agreement, the international community must agree on a new financing goal for the climate action measures in developing countries. However, an agreement still seems a long way off. How can the new climate financing goal contribute to global justice? And how can the role of civil society, which is increasingly being criticised, be strengthened again during the climate negotiations?

Norbert Gorissen, Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Action at the German Federal Foreign Office, acknowledged the need for the new climate finance goal to go beyond the $100 billion in climate finance that is currently being mobilised by developed countries. Jan Kowalzig, Senior Policy Advisor for Climate Change at Oxfam Germany, highlighted that the new climate finance goal needs to be a large step beyond current levels of climate finance. This is because the Paris Agreement, signed in 2015, did not take into account the growing amount of money needed by vulnerable communities to adapt to climate impacts and deal with loss and damage. Not reaching an agreement on climate finance would put the Paris Agreement at risk, warned Raju Chhetri, Executive Director of Prakriti Resources Centre in Nepal

While panellists agreed that public finance needs to remain at the core of international climate finance in the future, there was debate about the role that private finance can realistically play in addressing the needs of hard-hit communities in the Global South. The Ugandan climate activist Hamira Kobusingye highlighted that fossil fuel subsidies and investments need to be diverted to climate finance. Industrialised countries such as Germany have a historical responsibility for the climate crisis and need to keep their promises on climate finance. To what extent other countries should also start paying climate finance remains a topic of debate. 

Welcoming and introduction: Dr. Christiane Averbeck, Executive Director Klima-Allianz Deutschland 
Keynote: Dr. Dagmar Pruin, President of Bread for the World 
Moderator: Christine Mhundwa (DW)

The event took place in cooperation with Brot für die Welt.

The joint paper of Klima-Allianz Deutschland and VENRO with demands for COP29 can be found here.

Fotos: Jörg Farys/Klima-Allianz Deutschland. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Anfragen zur Nutzung der Fotos bitte an Laura Simanjuntak.

Laura Simanjuntak

Mitarbeiterin Veranstaltungen und Netzwerkarbeit
Klima-Allianz Deutschland e.V.

030/780 899 513
laura.simanjuntak@klima-allianz.de