After the conference, the G8 website only wrote: “The meeting of the environment ministers of the G8 countries and the five major newly industrialising countries came to an end in Potsdam having set a definite course for the conservation of biological diversity and for climate protection.” That is all.

Further information on the website of the German Ministry for the Environment BMU dates back to before the Potsdam meeting. But after the meeting: nothing.

Nothing stimulates curiosity more then the lack of press releases at a moment when you would definitively expect some.

What is this silence supposed to mean? Is it the silence after a diplomatic storm? Has climate change failed to bring humanity together? Speculations abound.

Let’s face it: the task is huge. Germany will chair the G8+5 meeting in Heiligendamm in June and has repeatedly declared that it aims for the same climate awareness as in the European Spring Summit, during which the Council adopted the EU’s ambitious energy package.

According to the Berliner Zeitung, which spoke with German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel after the conference, the US wasn’t very cooperative. The US focused on technology, like clean coal power plants, and categorically rejected any emissions trading or emissions limits in fear of endangering employment. In fact, the US treated climate change as an internal affair.

The developing countries, on the other hand, acknowledge the climate problems, but they point to the industrial countries as the main culprits. Prime Minister Singh of India is quoted in The Hindu newspaper as saying, “Problems of climate change have a global impact and cannot be limited within national boundaries. All nations have obligations to safeguard and protect the environment.”

Between these two, presumably German and UN Sherpas now move in silence to find some sort of common ground, firm enough to form the basis for a post-2012 climate agreement.

Jos Wassink

Editor GreenPrices Newsdesk