Turkey’s parliament votes for Paris climate agreement

Updated on 7 October 2021 at 10:12 am

• Nearly six years after the decision and a few weeks before the next world climate summit, Turkey has ratified the Paris climate agreement.
• It remains to be seen whether the country is actually promoting climate protection or whether the decision was just a strategic decision.

You can find more current news here

A few weeks before the UN climate conference in Glasgow, Turkey also ratified the Paris climate agreement. Parliament on Wednesday evening voted on a deal to tackle climate change, state news agency Anadolu reported. Climate activists are now calling on the government to take action.

“Turkey has preferred coal for decades”

In the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the global community agreed to limit global warming to less than 1.5 degrees, if possible. The World Climate Conference COP26 is scheduled to take place in Glasgow, Scotland in November. This meeting is considered an important milestone in reaching agreements on the concrete and implementation of the agreement. Germany signed the agreement in 2016.

Greenpeace’s Gokhan Ersoy sees the Turkish merger as a strategic move. In the current international environment, Turkey would have had a difficult situation if it had not ratified the agreement. It is not yet possible to say what concrete consequences the ratification will have on politics in the country. The government must now make concrete progress in climate policy. “For decades, Turkey has prioritized coal with political decisions,” heralded economic gains and little attention to the impact on the environment, sustainability or other answers to the climate crisis.

Erdogan relies on nuclear power

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been repeatedly addressing environmental protection recently and declaring that he wants to rely on nuclear power, for example. Apart from the Akkuyu nuclear power plant currently under construction in southern Turkey, there are currently no nuclear power plants in the country. Turkey meets its energy needs mainly from coal, gas and oil. (DPA/MCF)