The world’s environmental and climate ministers have failed to reach an agreement on issues such as fossil fuels, emissions and carbon taxes at their gathering in Chennai in India.
The final meeting of climate and environment ministers from the world’s largest economies ended without an agreement or joint statement on Friday despite pleas from leading figures for nations to show a united front on climate change as weather records shatter across the globe.
According to reports, the ministers from the Group of 20 countries — who emit around 80% of the world’s planet-warming gases — failed to agree on four of 68 points of discussion. A document published by the group shows countries did not agree on aiming to peak emissions by 2025, moving to clean energy or a tax on carbon as a way to reduce emissions.
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France’s ecological transition minister, Christophe Bechu was quoted as saying that he was “very disappointed”:
“We are not able to reach an agreement of increasing drastically renewable energy, we are not able to reach an agreement on phasing out or down fossil fuels, especially coal, and it’s just very odd to see what happens outside this hotel, this G20, in the real world and to see the difficulties to find just the diplomatic wording on these environmental issues.”
Others say the glass is half full. Canada’s climate minister, Steven Guilbeault at a virtual press conference after the meeting said “We couldn’t get a consensus but we agreed on a lot,”.
The ministers’ decisions will now be passed on to country leaders ahead of a summit in New Delhi in September this year. It will be the group’s last chance to issue a joint statement on climate this year.
Story was adapted from euronews.
