Read “The Road to Rio Goes Through Los Cabos: Connecting the G20 Summit to Rio+20."
Follow Think Progress’s on-the-ground coverage of the Rio+20 conference here. (CAP Action)
Washington, D.C. — The Center for American Progress today released “The Road to Rio Goes Through Los Cabos: Connecting the G20 Summit to Rio+20." The following CAP experts will be available this week and next to discuss the role of climate and energy issues in both conferences:
This G-20 meeting, unlike all those that came before it, starts a week that will end with the Rio+20 global environmental summit, the likes of which the world has rarely seen. Indeed, it could very well be the case that the dates were picked intentionally to encourage more G-20 leaders to attend the Rio meeting. Given that the switch from fossil fuels to more sustainable alternatives is one of the biggest development opportunities, a plan forward out of the climate crisis must, in part, go through the world’s finance ministries, and therefore through the G-20. While it would be wrong to try to come up with a global climate agreement in a forum like the G-20, it would also be a missed opportunity to not use this forum where appropriate to help create a positive outcome in Rio.
We have seen a gradual increase in the mention of climate and energy issues within the G-20 communiqué that ends each meeting. At the first summit in Washington in 2008, only one of the 95 commitments referenced in the communiqué was on climate and energy. The next year in London, this number grew to 6 of 88, then 25 of 128 in Pittsburgh, with this trend continuing with the exception of the 2010 Toronto meeting, showing a low of 4 of 61 commitments. The G-20 can and should build momentum for the Rio meeting, and the best way it can do so is to focus on establishing a roadmap for completion of its signature commitment to date on climate and energy—the commitment made in Pittsburgh in 2009, in advance of the Copenhagen climate summit, to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels in the medium term.
As CAP experts Andrew Light and Rebecca Lefton detailed in “Working Together for Global Clean Energy,” one of the most important agreements that could come out of Rio is U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon’s Sustainable Energy for All Initiative. It has three core components:
- Ensure universal access to electricity by 2030
- Double the rate of energy efficiency improvement by 2030
- Double the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix by 2030
By starting the week out by demonstrating a commitment to achieving the fossil fuel reduction goal, the G-20 parties could set a standard to be lived up to in Rio. Whether it is the Sustainable Energy for All Initiative, or some other concrete commitment that emerges out of Rio, it will only be meaningful if it is accompanied by a roadmap, which very well could start a few hundred miles north.
Read “The Road to Rio Goes Through Los Cabos: Connecting the G20 Summit to Rio+20."
Follow Think Progress’s on-the-ground coverage of the Rio+20 conference here. (CAP Action)
To speak to CAP experts, please contact Madeline Meth at 202.741.6277 or [email protected].
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