UN climate talks in Germany start without final agenda for discussions

The UN climate talks in Germany started on Monday (5) without a final agenda agreed for their technical discussions, said a senior negotiator, reducing optimism that the 10-day meeting will result in a clear program for the COP28 conference in Dubai.

The Bonn Climate Change Conference, designed to prepare decisions for adoption at COP28 in the UAE, is seen as an intermediate step in how ambitious international climate negotiations will take shape at COP28 in December.

But despite months of discussions since COP27 in Egypt, there has been no agreement on the adoption of the agendas proposed by the COP’s permanent subsidiary bodies for the Bonn conference, said Nabeel Munir, chair of the UN Subsidiary Body for Implementation, at the opening of the talks.

“It’s never good when the parties can’t agree on something as seemingly simple as the agenda for the next sessions,” Tom Evans, policy adviser at independent climate study group E3G, told Reuters.

The main sticking point was whether there would be an agenda item on climate change mitigation at the Bonn conference, an item the European Union had proposed that would pose the issue of phasing out fossil fuels, Evans said.

At last year’s climate summit in Egypt, more than 80 countries, including the EU and small island nations, agreed to include this point in the final text, calling for a phase-out of all fossil fuels. Countries such as Saudi Arabia and China asked Egypt not to include this issue in the final text.

The Bonn conference will witness several discussions on critical climate change policy issues, including the so-called global stocktaking at COP28, where countries will review their collective progress every five years, for the first time since the historic Paris Agreement in 2015.

A global goal of adaptation, a just transition to sustainable societies and the preparation of decisions on the new damages fund, agreed at COP 27, are among the topics on the agenda of the Bonn conference.