In order to put the spotlight on the call for more climate protection – both nationally and internationally – and for more equality in dealing with the effects of climate change, this autumn, a group of people departed on the third Ecumenical Pilgrimage for Climate Justice – from Bonn (COP 23) via Berlin to Katowice (COP 24). The Ecumenical Pilgrimage for Climate Justice is supported by a broad ecumenical alliance of 40 organizations, initiatives, and companies, including the German Catholic and the German Lutheran Church, representing about 45 million Christians in Germany, and the Polish Ecumenical Council.
We demand
• that the goals of the Paris Agreement are pursued more fervently, so that the global
warming is limited to 1,5 degrees Celsius,
• a significant increase in the financial endowment of the international Funds for Climate
Change as well as for Compensation and Adjustment.
The Paris Climate Agreement will only be as good as its implementation on the national level. While the corridor for effective corrections geared towards the accelerating climate crisis narrows, short term (false) solutions and attempts at maintaining the status quo jeopardize the future. We therefore demand from the contracting nations an internationally binding set of regulations for the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
After successful and exemplary diplomacy in the past, the Federal Government must now follow
up with convincing actions on a national level. We demand from the German Government to steer
Germany back on an ambitious and binding path of climate protection and
• to act immediately and resolutely, so that Germany can reach its climate goals,
• to implement a “Climate Protection Emergency Program”, a focused national climate
protection plan, Climate Protection Legislation with ambitious goals as well as supporting
measures and subsidy programs,
• (with a view to the goals of 2020) a closure of the oldest brown-coal power plants,
• active and financial support of socially responsible structural changes in the impacted brown-
coal regions, a timely initiation accompanied by the legal framework for fossil-fuel phase-out as
well as accelerating the transition to renewable energies,
• initiation of an ecological transportation policy by redirecting subsidies to climate-friendly
transportation.
Germany will miss both its national as well as the EU climate targets for 2020. In the past nine years, there has been no reduction in CO2 emissions. Coal is the largest single contributor to CO2 emissions in Germany. However, transportation, construction and agriculture are also contributing too little towards reducing greenhouse emissions.
21% of all greenhouse emissions are caused by transportation. Now is the time for a climate friendly
transportation policy, including:
• binding reduction targets for the transportation sector and
• the expansion of public transport as well as public freight traffic
We expect that the Federal Government pursue all efforts – both before and during the 24th Climate
Change Conference in Katowice – so that a binding set of policies for the implementation of the Paris
Agreement can be agreed upon:
• by initiating the brown-coal phase-out in Germany,
• through active participation in the Talanoa Dialog.
We welcome the Federal Government’s announcement to support the international increase in climate change financing. An increase in German funds for compensation, protection, and adjustment for those countries of the “global South” most affected by climate change would be the correct first step.
3. Ökumenischer Pilgerweg für Klimagerechtigkeit
Koordinationsstelle im Ev.-Luth. Missionswerk Leipzig e.V.
Paul-List-Str. 19, 04103 Leipzig | Tel.: 0341 253 55 593
www.facebook.com/klimapilgerweg