This year’s Petersberg Climate Dialogue (PCD) from 25-26 April 2024 held in Berlin, Germany focuses on the preparations for COP29 in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku as well as on the concrete decisions that were reached at COP28 in Dubai, that must now be implemented.
The Petersberg Climate Dialogue serves as an annual platform for informal, high-level political discussions that focus on advancing international climate negotiations and promoting tangible climate action.
Delegates from 40 countries are attending this year’s high-level dialogue series, the 15th such event, as it is an important series in the international climate calendar. At the conference, discussions will be held at political levels about the key challenges of international climate policy. The central goal is to strengthen trust both in multilateral climate negotiations and between states.
The focus this year explicitly lays on the expansion of renewable energies as well as doubling energy efficiency, as agreed by the international community at COP28 in Dubai. Specifically, all countries will have to draw up new climate targets (Nationally Determined Contributions 3.0, NDCs) and climate plans this year, henceforward paving the way for a climate-neutral economy.
UN-Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Simon Stiell thus recently wrote to all parties and observer states in a letter entitled “From Vision to Reality: NDCs 3.0 – bending the curve” emphasizing the importance.
“Crucially, your NDCs 3.0 and 2030 targets will collectively determine whether the world can get back on a global emissions trajectory in line with limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C this century, as required by science under the Paris Agreement, whilst also building the resilience for such a scenario”, Stiell underlined. “In all respects, your NDCs 3.0 will be the most important climate documents produced so far this century in securing the safety and prosperity of your peoples.”
The Petersberg Climate Dialogue features high-level discussions revolving around exactly these aspects. In addition to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev as the host of COP29 and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, decision-makers from industrialized, emerging and developing countries have the chance to speak to one another and engage to lay the groundwork for upcoming decisions.
The German Foreign Office is broadcasting the Petersberg Climate Dialogue live on social media: https://bit.ly/4aMfXSP
Additional information:
The inaugural Petersberg Climate Dialogue, convened by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to enhance dialogue between leaders and environmental ministers after the challenging negotiations at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15), took place from April 2-4, 2010. It was held at Hotel Petersberg, situated on the hill known as “Petersberg” near Bonn, Germany—home to the UNFCCC headquarters. In subsequent years, the conference has been hosted in Berlin.