Was the Bonn climate talk promising for the upcoming COP30?

This year's June Climate Meetings (SB62), also known as the Bonn Climate Change Conference, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), concluded on June 26 in Bonn, Germany. The mission of these annual mid-year meetings is to draft decision texts on the agenda items for final approval at the upcoming Conference of the Parties-30 (COP30), to be held in November in Belém, Brazil. Overall, the agenda comprised approximately 50 items and 30 mandatory events.

However, actual negotiations were delayed due to disagreements over the addition of two new agenda items proposed by the powerful Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) and the Arab Group, consisting of China, India, South Africa, Bolivia, and Saudi Arabia. The first proposal focused on Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement (PA), which addresses the obligation of developed countries to provide public climate finance to developing nations. This was a point of contention, as developing countries argue it is a legal obligation that has not been adequately met. The second agenda item proposed was on trade measures, such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), that the EU is considering imposing on developing country exports. Finally, a compromise was struck whereby those items were not agreed upon but were reflected in discussions.

This time, the agendas of the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and Just Transition were prominent. The earlier debate over indicators of the GGA, particularly of "Means of Implementation", such as climate finance, capacity-building, and technology, continued because developed countries reject indicators that can measure their support levels. Finally, a compromised text was adopted: "indicators for means of implementation and other factors that enable the implementation of adaptation action are to be included…"

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As always, finance negotiations across agendas continued to be the most intractable, this time under new geopolitical scenarios—new wars, the US withdrawal from the PA, and climate and other aid cuts by the US and major European countries. Relying on the private sector to fund climate adaptation, a strategy promoted by developed nations, is not working. The evidence is stark: private investment has accounted for just two percent of adaptation funding, making this approach especially unsuited to an era of declining global cooperation. Against this poor record, LDCs continued demanding a tripling of adaptation finance by 2030.

Among mandated workshops, the most important was the discussion on Article 2.1(c) of the PA, which is about aligning finance flows to ensure low-carbon and climate-resilient development. However, even during this third workshop on the issue, there was not much discussion on how to operationalise this goal. There were deliberations on capacity-building for national financial regulators and the private sector. The crux of this issue is how to complement this goal with Article 9 of the PA.

The COP30 presidency wishes to achieve some tangible outcomes. I regard the four letters shared so far by the presidency as masterpieces of advocacy for global norms and values, which urged the parties to be guided by three interconnected priorities for SB62 and COP30: (1) to reinforce multilateralism and the climate change regime under the UNFCCC; (2) to connect the climate regime to people's lives; and (3) to accelerate the implementation of the PA by stimulating action and structural adjustments across all institutions that can contribute to it.

To connect people to climate actions, Brazil is scheduled to lead the launch of the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) at the COP, with a planned mobilisation of $125 billion as conservation finance from government and private sources. Together with mitigation, the TFFF is a permanent endowment fund that compensates governments and communities for maintaining or restoring forests.

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Now that all rules of the PA are operational, implementation is the focus. The COP30 presidency elaborated on this in its fourth letter, shared on June 20, with a detailed "action agenda". It consists of six themes and 30 key suggested activities, which will be deliberated in Belém. To realise this priority, there is a need for reform of multilateral institutions, including the COP, as recognised by the presidency. But this is likely to be a tall order, at least for the foreseeable future.

Despite all these odds, as an organising principle, the presidency letters explicate the Brazilian indigenous culture-based concept of "mutirão", which means a community coming together to work on a shared task. So the COP30 presidency invites the climate community to a global mutirão against the polycrisis. Some of the excellent ideas contained in those letters are: systemic, non-linear thinking for structural adjustments; forward-looking approaches to solve collective action problems like climate change; and aligning ancestral wisdom with the latest science and social technology.

In fact, in doing rigorous homework, Brazil has taken elaborate organisational initiatives, such as the nomination of 30 prominent international and national envoys, who will work with the leadership. The selected envoys and champions, including former national leaders, veteran lead negotiators and youth celebrities, were chosen for their influence, experience, and credibility among their peers. Besides, the host established four very high-level leadership circles: the Circle of Finance Ministers, the Circle of Peoples, the Circle of Ethics and Stocktake, and the Circle of COP Presidents. The latter two are led by the UN secretary-general and the COP21 president, who led the crafting of the PA.

With all this due diligence, the Brazilian presidency wants to avoid what it calls the continued "brutality of inaction" in the COP process. As an academic negotiator for over 20 years, I have dubbed climate negotiations a process of "active inaction" in my first book on adaptation politics in 2014. Let us hope that COP30, under the able leadership of Brazil, with its stated lofty norms and values guided by the global mutirão, can change the course of negotiations—at least a little.

Dr Mizan R Khan is technical lead at LDC Universities Consortium on Climate Change (LUCCC).

Views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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