Bonn climate talks end in disappointment

The United Nations climate talks in Bonn, Germany, have ended in disappointment and bickering, with negotiators only agreeing to an agenda on the penultimate day and leaving key issues affecting the development sector unresolved. Climate finance — or the lack of it — was a key stumbling block, stunting talks on adaptation and loss and damage amid widening concerns about the overall trajectory of the only international political climate process. Financing has long been promised to lower-income countries but high-income nations have so far fallen short, undermining trust in the negotiations. The annual conference in Bonn marks the halfway point to the 28th United Nations Conference of Parties, or COP 28, and attendees had hoped the event would steer the COP talks — with their grinding, highly complex work program — on a positive trajectory to the political decision making at the year’s main climate talks in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in November. Advocates hope COP 28 will achieve progress on key issues such as the phasedown of fossil fuels, climate adaptation, and loss and damage. As the talks closed Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres made his anger clear. “Countries are far off-track in meeting climate promises and commitments,” he said Thursday. “I see a lack of ambition. A lack of trust. A lack of support. A lack of cooperation. And an abundance of problems around clarity and credibility. The climate agenda is being undermined.” Guterres, who did not attend the Bonn talks, was in New York launching his “Acceleration Agenda,” which mostly focused on strategies for climate mitigation — focused on reducing fossil fuel emissions — but he did call on governments to “support the just [energy] transition of impacted developing countries.” Guterres also took aim at fossil fuel companies, whom he said had a “special responsibility” to help reduce emissions. Sultan al-Jaber, United Arab Emirates president-designate for the COP 28 talks in Dubai, briefly showed up in Bonn and referenced the “inevitability” of a fossil fuel phase-out — a comment that campaigners welcomed but said would need to be followed through with substantial action. Jaber has become a controversial figure because the COP host is supposed to coordinate and smooth over the fiendishly difficult climate talks, and Bonn marks a time when a clear approach is supposed to be taking shape. But “the UAE left governments in the dark on their plans for how they hope to get world leaders rallying around a shared vision,” said Tom Evans, policy adviser on climate diplomacy and geopolitics at E3G, a think tank. As lower-income countries increasingly struggle with the global debt crisis, tensions around the lack of climate finance delivered to them by higher-income countries have increased. Lower-income countries showed “increasing resolve” on climate finance in Bonn by rejecting some mitigation elements of the talks when climate finance was not being discussed, according to Vaibhav Chaturvedi, a fellow at the Council on Energy Environment and Water in Delhi, India. “The developed world has to sooner than later accept the criticality of finance for low income nations, and walk the talk on the same," Chaturvedi said. Higher-income countries are accused of dodging their obligations. As agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement, lower-income countries say they need money, additional to aid, from the global north — whose countries produced the most emissions causing climate change — to adapt their societies and the transition to lower carbon energy sources. Higher-income countries promised to deliver $100 billion per year in climate finance by 2020, which has not been met. Meanwhile, the agreement at COP 27 to establish a Loss and Damage Fund has placed further demand on climate finance. “UN climate talks this week exposed a gaping hole in the funding needed to pay for climate action,” said Teresa Anderson, ActionAid International’s global lead on climate justice. “Developing countries are being pushed deeper into debt by the costs of climate disasters, but the promised funding to cope with climate impacts and scale up green technologies still hasn’t appeared.” High-income countries are trying to “artificially inflate” their climate finance figures, she said. A recent Reuters investigation found governments were legally reporting unrelated expenses as climate finance. The lack of progress in Bonn means adaptation talks, established to help achieve parity with climate mitigation funding, are now off track. Adaptation deals with helping societies adjust to hotter temperatures and the weather changes caused by climate change. Governments agreed at COP 26 in Glasgow to double adaptation financing, which tends to involve development-like programs or big public infrastructure projects. But that has not happened, and an analysis by the NGO CARE International, published June 14, said that “there is no chance of achieving 50/50 balanced financial support for climate mitigation and adaptation in the near future.” “It is critical that impacted communities have access to resources that enable them to lead adaptation efforts and thrive in these uncertain and changing conditions. Disappointingly, the Bonn climate talks have not delivered the progress we all very much need,” said Marlene Achoki, global policy co-lead of climate justice with CARE International. The discussions around creating the Loss and Damage Fund have also encountered problems, with lower-income countries demanding the money comes in grant form or highly concessional loans. This fund is another key point of tension within climate talks, and failure to enact it by COP 28 would be seen by some as a failure of the talks. Activists have called for fossil fuel levies to finance loss and damage.