Berlin (d.de) – Ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference COP28, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has appealed to the global community to seize this opportunity to combat climate change. “We find ourselves in a race against time – and we have been too slow to date. The forthcoming COP is a huge opportunity to pick up the pace, an opportunity we should seize together by forming alliances among countries at the forefront of climate action,” she wrote in a guest article. “What gives me hope is that we have the knowledge, the technology as well as the instruments to contain the climate crisis together. What we need is political will,” she added. In her article she names three points that Germany believes are key: “We should hugely ramp up the global energy transition by 2030”; “Our best tool for tackling the climate crisis is solidarity” and “We want to expand and invest in our partnerships”.
The 28th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP28 for short, will begin in Dubai on Thursday and is expected to be attended by 70,000 participants from around 200 states. It is scheduled to end on 12 December. This time the presidency is being held by the United Arab Emirates. Germany is taking COP28 very seriously: The German government will be represented at the conference in Dubai by the heads of the foreign ministry (Federal Foreign Office), the environment ministry (BMUV), the economics and climate action ministry (BMWK) and the development ministry (BMZ).