‘Best strategy for climate justice: avoid climate change’

Brussels – ‘The best way to do climate justice’, said Dutch climate researcher Frans Alkemade during a round table organised by the EGP grassroots network  in Brussels on 30 January, ‘is to avoid climate change.’ And the most efficient way to do that, is not, he added, put all your assets on ambitious CO2-reductions in Europe, but to offer China to sponsor cleaner charcoal technology.  It was one of the proposals to get the world out of the deadlock after the Climate non-summit. Surely the EU should keep its reduction ambitions high and offer substantial funds for helping the poorest countries to cope with climate change, the participants concluded, if it wants to get the initiative back and put pressure on the US. But additional strategies are called for, like a ‘coalition of the willing’ of the most ambitious states, damage control by industrialised countries sponsoring cleaner technologies in emerging economies and for develpoment countries an exemption from duties for intellectul property rights for climate technology.

Follow-up: specialists from party working groups will be invited to explore the above mentioned and other promising strategies. Read full report.