German Chancellor Angela Merkel , has assumed Friday leadership in the defense of the Paris Agreement after the abandonment of the US , five weeks before the meeting of G20 leaders Hamburg, which is invited Donald Trump, and months before Of the next climate summit in Bonn.
“Nothing will stop us,” Merkel promised in a statement to the media, days after sending the first signal that the time had come to emancipate the great transatlantic ally following the G7 summit in Taormina, Italy.
There it was perceived as an adverse decision on climate change was coming from the US, since Trump did not want to subscribe with the rest of the powers a mention to the defense of the Agreement, and Merkel called the Europeans to take the reins of his destination.
“It is a very regrettable decision and I express it in a very contained way,” said the chancellor Friday, in his role as the enemy leader of stridencies or verbal exits, but ready to make his message clear: Germany, Europe and the Are “more determined than ever” to fight against climate change.
It is a very regrettable decision and I express it very contained – Angela Merkel
Fulfilling the commitments made is “essential” to achieve the goals of the UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda 2030, he said, and the Paris Agreement is a “pillar” of international cooperation in this shared struggle.
“To all those who consider the future of our planet important, I say to them:” Let us continue together on the path to success, for our motherland, “she stressed, to promise that Germany will achieve its financial goals and commitments.
Already the previous night, while France, Germany and Italy issued a joint communique warning that the agreement will not be renegotiated and the French president, Emmanuel Macron , sentenced from Paris that the US “has turned its back on the world”, the German Minister of the Environment Environment, Barbara Hendricks, tried to send some message of optimism amid general disappointment.
The climate will survive eight years of Trump.
“The climate will survive eight years of Trump,” said the Social Democrat minister on public television ARD, referring to the maximum term of office of a US president Donald Trump.
As of next year, US money will be lacking for the Green Climate Fund, but Germany believes that this gap can be covered by other financial instruments, for example through the World Bank.
The Ministry of the Environment is now coordinating the global climate conference to be held in November, under the presidency of Fiji, in the former German capital Bonn, home to the UNFCCC Secretariat.
GENERAL DECEPTION
Merkel spoke last night with Macron and both agreed to push for the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement in Bonn.
SHe also held a telephone conversation with Trump, in which the Chancellor transferred her”disappointment” to the US withdrawal.
The US decision coincides with German preparations for the next major test for multilateralism, the G20 summit, and with Merkel and Macron’s willingness to relaunch the Franco-German axis in times of global uncertainty.
The chancellor will be the host on July 7 and 8 in Hamburg of the leaders of the major powers and emerging countries, where, in addition to Trump, Russian Vladimir Putin and Turkish Recep Tayyip Erdogan are expected, two other difficult guests for the chancellor.
Berlin is preparing the meeting in detail and Merkel has had previous meetings with practically all the leaders of the group.
The next week he travels to Mexico and Argentina, which will relieve Germany of the G20 presidency, and yesterday received the Prime Minister of China, Li Keqiang, the country that exercised that function in 2016.
Li was welcomed in Berlin as well as in his next stage, Brussels, as an exemplary student, who from his position as the most polluting country in the world – ahead of the US – has moved to a firm commitment to the Paris Agreement.
In Germany and in the community, Li said that his country will assume its “international responsibility” in the fight against climate change.
