No official agenda for tech mediations over climate change yet on the table

The impasse could jeopardise the agenda at the COP28 climate conference to be held in Dubai in November and urgent action on the climate crisis.

A week into the Bonn climate talks which is scheduled to close on Thursday, there is as yet no official agenda on the table for the technical negotiations.

Visitors sit inside the World Conference Center Bonn during the Climate Change Conference in Bonn, western Germany on June 13, 2023. (AFP)

At the heart of this logjam is the issue of funding for the mitigation of the climate crisis. In line with the Paris Agreement’s principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities, developing countries have sought an agenda on finance for scaling up mitigation action.

But developed countries led by the US and the EU have opposed the agenda stating that existing mechanisms address the issue of finance; the former has added that it is open to a discussion when the flow of finance is not limited to developed countries paying developing countries but also includes funding from emerging economies and the private sector.

The impasse, which could jeopardise the agenda at the COP28 climate conference to be held in Dubai in November and urgent action on the climate crisis, stems from a deep lack of trust because developed countries are not willing to recognise their historical responsibility .

During the opening plenary of the subsidiary bodies held at Bonn on Monday evening, the Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) grouping of which India is also a member stated that they seek the inclusion of an agenda item on urgently scaling up finance to support implementation of mitigation action during this decade in developing countries.

“We are conscious of the need to scale up ambition. It’s now an imperative. But, it has to be in line with equity and common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities. In the hunger for action, the discussion can’t solely be on scaling up ambition especially in the background of failed promises on finance. We need discussion on how mitigation action can be achieved. We need to correct the course of financial support,” Bolivia’s representative said on behalf of LMDC on Monday.

China backed this and said there should be a negotiation track on finance. “This agenda item is very important to us because we have been asking that finance be taken up as an agenda for many years but it was not allowed in the SBs (subsidiary bodies). Finance is important to put NDCs (nationally determined contributions) in action. We are eager to fulfil our commitment on mitigation and that is why the issue is important. Finance has always been a dialogue but there has been no serious negotiation on it. We need a negotiation track for finance,” said a negotiator from China. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established three governing bodies: COP (or the Conference of Parties), which is the apex decision making body, the CMP (the signatories of the Kyoto agreement), and the CMA (the signatories of the Paris agreement). It also established two subsidiary bodies, one on scientific and technological advice (SBSTA) and another on implementation (SBI) to assist the parties.

Cuba on behalf of G77+China also explained that there will be more suspicion if the finance agenda was restricted.

The EU objected to the agenda by LMDC and stated that though the discussion on finance was very important to them, the Paris Agreement has provisions which states support will be provided and there are several discussions on finance that are ongoing under different heads. The US said they do not support Bolivia’s proposal because there are many other opportunities to discuss the issue and a new agenda is not needed. They also said the new agenda item does not derive from the COP mandate and that there is nothing that limits donors to developed countries .

In 2009, at COP15 in Copenhagen, developed countries committed to a goal of raising $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries. They specified that the finance would come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral, and multilateral, including alternative ones. The climate finance goal was formalised at COP16 in Cancun but has still not been delivered on.

“It is estimated that $4 trillion per year needs to be invested in renewable energy up until 2030 to be able to reach the goal of net zero emissions by 2050. An investment of at least $4-6 trillion per year will be needed for a global transformation to a low-carbon economy,” Bhupender Yadav, union environment minister had said last month at an HT summit on G20, while highlighting that developed countries who agreed to mobilise $100 billion funds for mitigation efforts in developing countries couldn’t yet fulfil the promise.

Experts and observers of the climate talks in Bonn said the issue is a question of equity and needs to be addressed for the talks to move forward.

“Wealthy nations persistently focus on pressuring emerging economies to bear the cost of global climate action. In doing so, they conveniently overlook their own historical responsibility. These wealthy nations have repeatedly failed to meet their equitable obligation in providing climate finance, opting instead to transfer this burden onto developing nations. It’s high time for these countries to cease passing the buck, and instead pay their long overdue climate debts,” said Harjeet Singh, Head of Global Political Strategy, Climate Action Network International.

“The Government of India has rightly continued its efforts to corner the developed world on its inaction on pre-2020 commitments, particularly finance. The Mitigation Work Programme (MWP) crafted at Sharm-al-Sheikh aims at urgently scaling mitigation ambition and implementation. How is the developing world supposed to do so in absence of any support on the means of implementation from the developed world? The developed world needs to understand that it is infeasible to deliver on the MWP in absence of means of implementation,” said Vaibhav Chaturvedi, Fellow, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).

“There is a complete deadlock in the process right now because developed countries are not willing to put more money on the table to enable mitigation ambition in developing countries. The proposal by LMDC asking for ambition on financial support is extremely crucial, someone needed to say it,” said Avantika Goswami, climate change lead at Centre for Science and Environment.

HT reported on June 8 that India will not accept prescriptive messages from the Global Stocktake scheduled to take place at this year’s UN Climate Conference (COP28) on what national determined contributions should constitute. At the ongoing climate conference in Bonn, seen as a run-up to the COP28 meeting later this year in Dubai, India and other developing countries demanded that the Global Stocktake be guided by the principles of equity and historical responsibility.

The Global Stocktake (GST) is the process for reviewing the implementation of the Paris Agreement and its goal of keeping global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to keep it under 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. India intervened during a technical dialogue on the Global Stocktake to make its point.