Bonn climate conference shows COP30 is already falling behind
The United Nations Conference on the Parties, or COP, which welcomes annual negotiations that attract tens of thousands of senior government officials, activists and journalists, is the main world leader for international climate action each year. But a related conference of the United Nations held in Bonn, Germany, each summer is no less important. In this smaller and more technical case, diplomats and climate negotiators remain walking on the details necessary to transform the splashing promises made to the COP in reality.
But those who attended this week’s conference in Bonn, who ended on Thursday, say that the negotiators have only made interrupted progress. While diplomats have progressed on measures to help countries adapt to the effects of global warming and prepare their workers for the energy transition, they have stalled two critical questions that could derail the COP30 negotiations, the United Nations Conference on the climate of this year in Belém, Brazil, in November. Consequently, there is still little clarity on the path of mobilization of $ 1.3 billion of climate -related funding for developing countries, a key promise made at COP29 in Bakou, Azerbaijan, last year. Countries have not been earned beyond procedural discussions on how to eliminate fossil fuels worldwide, in accordance with an agreement concluded during climatic talks in Dubai almost two years ago.
“I’m not going to do sugar. We have much more to do before giving up in Belém, “said Simon Stiell, executive secretary for the United Nations Cadre Convention on Climate Change, the body that oversees discussions on the United Nations climate. “There is so much more work to do to maintain 1.5 in life, as required by science,” he added, referring to the historical objective of the 2015 Paris Agreement, itself the result of COP negotiations, to maintain global warming at less than 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees fahrenheit compared to pre-industrial levels.
As during the heights of the past climate, the main conflicts in Bonn seemed to be a question of money. In Baku last year, countries were locked in an prolonged debate on the quantity of richer funding than developed countries should provide to help poorer and industrialized countries to move away from fossil fuels and adapt to climate change. Although researchers believe that developing countries need billions of dollars to do so, rich nations have only been $ 300 billion in transfers per year by 2035. And although Baku’s decision has recognized a larger need by calling for rich countries to help collect $ 1.3 billion in global climate investment, it does not provide details accomplished.
In order to develop a way to develop and clarify these financial objectives, Brazilian and Azerbaijani climatic diplomats began to develop what they called the Bakou roadmap in Belém “, a report intended to define how rich nations could mobilize the $ 1.3 billion in funding. In Bonn, Brazilian officials had to start finding common ground with other countries to make the roadmap a reality. Instead, however, Reunion began with a controversial debate on the question of whether a provision on climate development of development in developing countries should be on the agenda at all. The dispute, which suggested that the tensions between developed and developing countries that would pay for climate action and how have developed the first two days of the conference. It left a short time to discuss the roadmap.
“The countries are completely uncertain of the roadmap, its appearance, and to what extent it will reflect the opinions of all countries,” said Sandra Guzmán Luna, who has participated in each cop since 2008 and is the general manager of the climate funding group for Latin America and the Caribbean, a research and advocacy initiative in the region. “There are more doubts on the roadmap than support.”
The uncertainty about finance has training effects on the extent of climate ambition that developing countries are ready to display. Countries are required to submit plans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions – officially called contributions determined nationally, or NDC – every five years. Despite an imminent deadline later this year, only two dozen countries submitted updated NDC. Guzmán Luna said that many developing countries refused to submit new NDCs with more ambitious climatic objectives due to a lack of financial support from the wealthy nations. Since the rich and industrializing countries have caused the part of the lion of global warming so far, the argument is, it is just that they have assumed most of the burden of the financing of the energy transition.
“There is a clear political statement from many developing countries only if there is no money, they will not increase the ambition,” said Guzmán Luna. “This is a legitimate point of developing countries to say it – but obviously, it is a huge risk of climate action.”
These disagreements do not increase well for COP30 negotiations in Belém, where world leaders will meet in the middle of growing frustration in the middle of a growing bunch of unwitting promises of previous cops.
