NINA NETZER| A GLOBAL GREEN NEW DEAL Contents 1. Introduction 2 2. National initiatives – jointly achieving a global deal? ......................... 2 3. Taking responsibility at the global level .................................... 4 4. Future challenges and the next steps ...................................... 5 This paper is based on the results of a two-year conference series on international energy and climate policy organised by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. The series took place within the framework of the FES Working Group for»Global Issues«. This Working Group involves all the FES country offices at sites which play a key role in the analysis of global issues. In addition to the liaison offices to EU and UN institutions in Brussels, Geneva and New York, the group also includes the FES offices in Egypt, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the USA. The Working Group has based its approach on the assumption that global challenges can only be solved within the framework of an intensified dialogue between industrialised and newly emerging countries, as the increasing importance of the G20 has shown over the last few years. The Working Group offers a structure with which to work under changing constellations on global challenges over the medium and long term and contributes to strengthening the dialogue between the Western industrialised and emerging, newly industrial­ising nations. In the last few years, the subject of international climate and energy policy has gained increasing importance, being viewed by actors both in the North and the South as a crucial topic given the increasingly visible effects of climate change accompanied at the same time by an unbridled demand for economic growth in the face of rising energy prices, increasingly scarce resources and growing energy demand. In order to be able to confront these complex challenges in the field of international climate and energy policy, the key global actors need to agree on far-reaching policy objectives very quickly. By the same token, there are a host of challenges which offer considerable potential for conflict such as the reshaping of the global energy sector, the mitigation of climate change and the question as to suitable governance structures which allow a fair share of the burden to be shouldered by North and South. Within the framework of the conference series on international energy and climate policy eight international conferences have taken place at the FES sites in Berlin, Brussels, Geneva, New Delhi, New York, Peking and São Paulo involving actors from politics, science, business and civil society. The aim was to create a platform for dia ­logue in order to facilitate exchange between actors on respective interests and positions, to make a contributi­on to agreeing on principles for climate and energy policy and to trace out possible policy solutions. The overar­ching issues in the process were what a common perspective on a sustainable energy and climate policy should look like, how the transition to a secure, low-carbon energy system can be achieved and what institutional matrix of mechanisms and rules are necessary to bring about such a change in direction. Sub-aspects such as the structure of the future energy mix(nuclear energy, bio fuels and renewable energies), options for the tran­sition to sustainable economic and social models as well as financing options for adaptation to and mitigation of climate change were discussed at the individual international conferences. This paper discusses future steps and challenges along the path towards a Global Green New Deal as a sort of synopsis of the individual areas. 1