The UN Climate Talks Say “Goodbye” to Bonn And “Hello” to Bangkok

For the past two weeks, Bonn was the scene of the UN climate negotiations, held by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The participating delegations were tasked to solve many remaining technical difficulties, in order to prepare the ground for implementing the Paris Agreement goals and shaping the rules that will transition the economies towards the future of zero carbon footprints. The technical guidelines of the Paris Agreement discussed in Bonn, the so-called Paris Rulebook, will then be ratified through a high-level political decision-making process later in the year, during the upcoming COP24.

Following the tradition of the peace-loving Pacific people, political officials and non-party stakeholders got involved in the Talanoa Dialogue for the first time. The participants of the dialogue were looking for answers to the questions: ‘Where are we now?’, ‘Where do we want to be?’, ‘How do we get there?

Li Shuo, Policy Adviser at Greenpeace, commented on the Talanoa Dialogue: “The architecture is there for ambition to be raised. The Talanoa Dialogue, which has led to a real spirit of cooperation, getting beyond the finger-pointing to remind everyone that we all share the same planet and we all need to do more to protect it. The mood created by Talanoa has to start delivering tangible results in the form of enhanced national targets, and we look forward to the EU and China taking an early lead on this.”

Steady progress has been made in the field of drafting guidelines for the Paris Agreement - especially with regards to the so-called ‘global stocktake’, which will function as a review progress and will help to increase ambition, efforts and results of countries’ climate change actions in five-year cycles.

Progress, however, did not come fast enough and many issues still remain to be solved until COP 24. Therefore parties agreed to meet one more time in Bangkok, Thailand in September in order to get all the preparatory work done in time.

The guidelines for Paris are starting to take shape, but are the participants satisfied with the outcome of the meetings in Germany?

Camilla Born, senior policy advisor for E3G, stated: “Negotiations went better than expected. Parties showed they are serious about delivering the Paris Agreement so in Bonn they got down to serious business. The next challenge is to mobilize the political will to get the COP24 outcomes over the line in Katowice.”

Mohamed Adow, the Climate Lead at Christian Aid, on the other hand, has expressed concern about securing financial resources for the system transformation and adaptation in order to neutralize the negative effects of global warming: “The radio silence on money has sown fears among poor countries that their wealthier counterparts are not serious about honoring their promises. This funding is not just a bargaining chip, it is essential for delivering the national plans that make up the Paris Agreement.

For the Paris Agreement to be a success we need the Katowice COP to be a success. And for the Katowice COP to be a success we need assurances that sources of funding will be coming.”

Jelena Kozbasic  is a young environmental journalist working for the only environmental news site of the country. She works as a full-time journalist while also pursuing a master in eco-politics. She is "obsessed with journalism" and is actively promoting better environmental regulations in her country.

To strengthen climate journalism around the globe, the FES Media Fellowship cooperates with Climate Tracker and supports two young journalists, Jelena Kozbasic  from Serbia and Ahmad Hamour  from Jordan, who participate in this program. They receive a climate media training, report from the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn and take part in FES events as well.