Bonn climate talks disappoint and up the stakes for Baku

As the climate negotiations wrap up in Bonn, Bill Hare, CEO and Senior Scientist, Climate Analytics, comments:

“Bonn climate talks are typically less intensive than COPs as they focus on laying a technical foundation for the decisions and accompanying politics that play out at the end of the year.

This session has seen a real upswing in disagreements between negotiating groups, with many areas open until the last minute, and some unable to agree on any outcome at all.

Many areas are being held up to see how the finance discussions are playing out on the New Collective Quantified Goal. This is really supercharging the stakes, which might actually end up being detrimental to a strong outcome from COP29.

In the wake of the Global Stocktake, there has been a distinct lack of energy around increased ambition, accelerating the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions or on phasing out fossil fuels.

We have also seen a disturbing push to not have transparency under the Article 6 rules on carbon markets, with some countries wanting no specific information about where emission units come from and go to.

Governments are deliberately passing the buck on to the talks at COP29 in Baku, where an inflated workload will make it much harder for negotiators to navigate competing items and land on the ambitious 1.5^oC-aligned outcome the world is waiting to see.

Leaving Bonn, it’s clear that there is a need for governments to step back and reckon with the bigger picture. Heatwaves, droughts, floods are hitting countries hard at this very moment. More needs to be done in the coming months to bring countries together and land on an agreement that truly reflects the urgency of where we are in this critical decade for the climate.”