South Africa Hosts G20 Climate Talks
(MENAFN) The final G20 Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group (ECSWG) Technical and Ministerial Meetings launched Monday in Cape Town, setting the stage for key environmental commitments.
South Africa’s Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Dion George, opened the sessions by emphasizing the critical role this week’s discussions will play in shaping the ECSWG Ministerial Declaration—dubbed the Cape Town Declaration. He described it as “a blueprint for practical cooperation, rooted in evidence and focused on delivery,” marking the first G20 environmental accord developed on African soil.
Minister George outlined three core pledges the declaration is expected to cement: accelerating the execution of existing global environmental agreements; enhancing collaboration between developed and developing nations through finance, technology, and capacity-building; and boosting transparency and accountability across all environmental efforts.
Delegates are set to focus their debates on six urgent priorities: biodiversity and conservation; land degradation, desertification, drought and water sustainability; chemicals and waste management; climate change; air quality; and oceans and coasts.
The ECSWG meeting, continuing through Wednesday, will produce recommendations that will guide the Ministerial Meeting from Thursday to Friday and ultimately feed into the G20 Leaders’ Summit scheduled for next month.
Yet, unity at the Cape Town talks was challenged by comments from Usha-Maria Turner, head of the U.S. delegation, who openly opposed references in the draft declaration to the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Turner asserted these issues “should not be the responsibility of international organizations or the G20.”
This stance echoes the prior U.S. rejection of the 2030 Agenda and SDGs under the Trump administration, injecting tension into the negotiations and potentially complicating consensus on the Cape Town Declaration’s alignment with broader global development frameworks.
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