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At the time of writing, they stood at 93, ranging from A for Abandoned Farmland Restoration to W for Water Distribution Efficiency. Talking to Ms. Patterson was refreshing not only because of the wide range of solutions Project Drawdown is offering, but also because of the strong belief that we can successfully address the climate challenge. The organization’s proposed solutions are meticulously tested for their practicality, affordability and actual impact. However, Andreas Klasen from Offenburg University sends a word of caution: Innovation, he tells us in an interview (see pages 14-17), is not a silver bullet, but improved international coordination could be “a game changer for the environment by 2030”. Which brings us back to COP27. The international community will come together in the shadows of the war in Ukraine and its sizeable economic impacts. The steep increase in energy prices has sent inflation in many countries soaring and the IMF is already
not only be green, but also just. Despite the rather challenging global outlook the need for urgent climate action has not seriously been undermined by recent, rather challenging developments. “Our world is in big trouble”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned in his opening address at the UN General Assembly’s 77th session in September 2022 in New York. Several countries have resorted to temporary crisis measures and short- term adaptations. But they made it clear that these are emergency responses, not solutions. Werner Hoyer, the President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), the largest multilateral development bank in the world in terms of assets, puts it very clearly: “We need to stay the course on decarbonization. Decarbonization is not a luxury, it’s an imperative if we want to keep our planet alive.”
The OPEC Fund's Climate Action Plan commits to doubling its climate financing by 2030 to 40 percent of approved projects.
warning of a “global recession”. The need to diversify supply chains and make economies more resilient has rarely been more pressing. More resilient means more sustainable. In his contribution (see pages 22-25), Raúl Alfaro-Pelico, Senior Director of the Rocky Mountain Institute think tank, argues that in order to succeed the energy transition must
We wish you an interesting read.
Axel Reiserer, Editor
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