The United Nations’ Conference of the Parties, or COP, which hosts annual negotiations that draw tens of thousands of top government officials, activists, and journalists every year, is understood to be the world’s primary conduit for international climate action. But a related UN conference held in Bonn, Germany, every summer is no less important. In this quieter, more technical affair, diplomats and climate negotiators haggle over the details necessary to turn the splashy promises made at COP into reality.
But those who attended this week’s conference in Bonn, which concluded on Thursday, say that negotiators made only halting progress. While diplomats made headway on measures to help countries adapt to the effects of global warming and prepare their workers for the energy transition, they stalled out on two critical issues that could derail negotiations at COP30, this year’s United Nations climate conference in Belém, Brazil, in November. As a result, there is still little clarity on the path to mobilizing $1.3 trillion in climate-related funding for developing nations, a key promise made at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, last year. Countries also failed to move beyond procedural discussions about how to phase out fossil fuels worldwide, in accordance with an agreement made at the climate talks in Dubai nearly two years ago.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it. We have a lot more to do before we meet again in Belém,” said Simon Stiell, executive secretary for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the body which oversees UN climate talks. “There is so much more work to do to keep 1.5 alive, as science demands,” he added, referring to the landmark goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement, itself a result of COP negotiations, to keep planetary warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit compared to preindustrial levels.
As at past climate summits, the key conflicts in Bonn appeared to be about money. In Baku last year, countries were locked in a protracted debate over how much funding richer, developed nations should provide to help poorer, industrializing nations move away from fossil fuels and adapt to climate change. Although researchers estimated that developing countries need trillions of dollars to do so, wealthy nations only committed to $300 billion in transfers per year by 2035. And while the decision in Baku recognized a larger need by calling on rich countries to help raise $1.3 trillion in global climate investment, it provided no specifics on how this will be accomplished.
In order to develop a pathway to expand and clarify those financial goals, Brazilian and Azerbaijani climate diplomats began an effort to develop what they called the “Baku to Belém roadmap,” a report intended to lay out how rich nations could mobilize the $1.3 trillion in funding. At Bonn, Brazilian officials were expected to begin finding common ground with other countries to make the roadmap a reality. Instead, however, the meeting began with a contentious debate over whether a provision on climate finance from developed to developing countries should be on the agenda at all. The dispute, which suggested that tensions between developed and developing countries over who would pay for climate action and how have only grown, consumed the first two days of the conference. That left little time to discuss the roadmap.
“Countries are quite uncertain about the roadmap, how it’s going to look, and to what extent it will reflect the views of all countries,” said Sandra Guzmán Luna, who has attended every COP since 2008 and is the general director of the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean, a research and advocacy initiative in the region. “There are more doubts about the roadmap than support.”
The uncertainty around finance has ripple effects on the scale of climate ambition that developing nations are willing to display. Countries are required to submit plans for lowering their greenhouse gas emissions — formally called Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs — every five years. Despite a deadline looming later this year, only two dozen or so countries have submitted updated NDCs. Guzmán Luna said that many developing countries are refusing to submit new NDCs with more ambitious climate goals because of a lack of financial support from wealthy nations. Given that rich, early-industrializing countries caused the lion’s share of global warming so far, the argument goes, it’s only fair that they should shoulder most of the burden of financing the energy transition.
“There is a clear political statement from many developing countries that if there is no money, they are not going to increase ambition,” said Guzmán Luna. “It’s a legitimate point from developing countries to say so — but obviously, it’s a huge risk for climate action.”
These disagreements don’t bode well for negotiations at COP30 in Belém, where world leaders will gather amid mounting frustration over a growing pile of unfulfilled promises from previous COPs.
