The oil and gas CEO at the helm of this year’s United Nations climate talks was still a lightning rod for objections, global carbon dioxide levels hit a record high, and delegates couldn’t even agree on an agenda as 10 days of mid-year negotiations got off to a rocky start in Bonn, Germany this week.
With the annual UN climate summit typically scheduled in November of December, the smaller mid-year meetings in May are seen as an important opportunity to thrash out technical issues underlying the COP agenda—issues like climate finance, a funding mechanism for loss and damage, the path to a fossil fuel phaseout, and this year’s Global Stock Take (GST), a mandated COP “moment” to assess countries’ progress in meeting their targets under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
But “despite months of discussions since the previous COP 27 in Egypt, there was no agreement on adopting the agendas proposed by the COP permanent subsidiary bodies for the Bonn conference,” Reuters reports, citing opening remarks by Pakistani climate minister Nabeel Munir, chair of UN Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI). Yet “making as much progress as possible in Bonn in the coming 10 days is important as the conference, with 200 countries’ representatives, sets the technical groundwork for the political decisions required in Dubai later this year,” when delegates gather for COP 28.
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