The Petersberg Climate Dialogue – on the way to COP30 in Belém

Ten years ago, with the Paris Agreement, the countries of the world achieved a historic breakthrough. In Paris, we agreed to do everything in our power, as a global community founded on shared responsibility, to limit global warming to 1.5°C on average. This consensus reached in Paris is now coming under pressure once again and with it our joint promise to safeguard for our children a future that is worth living in.

It is now more urgent than ever that we keep the 1.5°C goal of Paris in view – particularly since opposition is growing stronger. It is all the more important to use the Petersberg Climate Dialogue to help pave the way for COP30 in Belém and to support the Brazilian COP Presidency with their ambitious goals.

Anyone who dismisses climate action in these turbulent times as being expensive, onerous or superfluous cannot count. For if we do not act now, we will subsequently have much higher costs to deal with. The OECD and UNDP have just confirmed once again that less climate action means significantly lower economic growth in the future. Yet it is enough simply to take a look at the global markets: on a global scale, last year there was almost twice as much investment in renewable energies as in fossil fuels. In China, clean technologies already made up 10% of GDP in the past year. The global market for clean key technologies will reach the two billion mark by 2035. That presents huge business opportunities.

Climate action is not an end in itself. Whoever protects the climate also protects us as humanity, our prosperity and our security. Whoever does not do so saws at the branch on which we are all sitting. The agreement on a new paradigm for climate finance at the last COP in Baku can only be a starting point. Now we have to focus on implementation, also to achieve the global goals we set ourselves in Dubai: bringing about a socially just transition away from fossil fuels, tripling the share of renewables, doubling energy efficiency and stopping deforestation. Together with the Brazilian COP Presidency, we will work on these issues at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue – and build a bridge from Baku to Belém via Berlin.

The Petersberg Climate Dialogue has served for over two decades as a vital political forum to advance the global climate agenda. This year’s edition carries particular weight, as it represents a crucial step toward achieving successful outcomes at COP30 in Belém – the first COP convened after a full calendar year in which the world exceeded the 1.5°C temperature limit set by the Paris Agreement. In this context, we invite everyone to engage in an open and cooperative spirit – or, as we might say, the ‘mutirão’ spirit – in order to tackle a challenge as complex as climate change, with its social, economic and environmental dimensions so deeply intertwined. In the face of a shared global crisis, multilateralism and global governance are more necessary than ever.