The Brazilian diplomats presiding over the COP30 climate summit in November have said they want an “early harvest” at June’s mid-year climate negotiations in Bonn, aiming to secure agreements on two key issues that were left unresolved at COP29 last year.
Brazil’s lead climate diplomat Liliam Chagas told reporters this week she is seeking “real advances in the Bonn sessions” on the fledgling Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) and recommendations from the 2023 Global Stocktake (GST) of government climate action, so that decisions to move them forward can be approved at COP30.
The JTWP is a series of dialogues on how to make the transition to a greener world fair while the GST discussions focus on how the world’s governments should respond to being collectively off track to meet their goal to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial times.
Negotiators began talks at Climate Week, a UN event held in Panama this week, using an informal format called “world café” – grouping them in tables to discuss issues such as the role of Indigenous people and communities, economic drivers and social protections.
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Late last year, at COP29 in Baku, governments were split over what aspects of fairness the JTWP should tackle and whether finance should be included, as well as on whether transitioning away from fossil fuels should be mentioned in texts on how to take the GST forward.
Chagas said these issues had not been settled at COP29 because separate talks there on a new finance goal had proven so “lengthy and difficult”, but added that she was now trying to bring a “sense of urgency” to officials.
“These decisions, at this point in the year, they are something that will show that the COP process works [and] is resilient,” she said, adding that she wants to “early harvest some of the decisions in order to not leave everything for [COP30] in November”.
The COP30 Presidency expressed similar sentiments in its third open letter to negotiators released on Friday.
Global stocktake
The GST was a review of progress on climate change carried out in 2023 which found that, while government action had reduced the amount of global warming expected, it was still insufficient to limit average temperature rise to 1.5C.
At the COP28 climate talks in Dubai at the end of that year, governments jointly agreed to respond to this by calling on each other to take measures like tripling renewable energy capacity and transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems.
But the next year at COP29, they failed to include the same language on renewables and fossil fuels in the outcomes of a planned “UAE dialogue” on how to implement the recommendations of the GST. Saudi Arabia, which COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago visited on Friday, opposed any mention of fossil fuels in formal texts at COP29.
The Baku summit ended without agreement on the GST, with Chile’s lead negotiator Julio Cordano telling the closing plenary he was “concerned to see attempts to backtrack the agreements made last year”.
In its latest letter, the COP30 Presidency said the GST is “our guide to Mission 1.5”, a collective roadmap to keep to the 1.5C warming limit – and responding to it should include accelerating the global energy transition and halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.
“We must support one another to advance collectively on tripling renewable energy capacity globally, doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements, and transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly, and equitable manner,” said the letter.
Brazil calls on local groups to “inspire” governments in boosting climate action
COP30 CEO Ana Toni told negotiators at Panama’s Climate Week that governments must now figure out the details of how they plan to achieve the GST, discussing options for support in the form of new regulations, finance and capacity-building.
“If in the past people thought that federal governments going from COP to COP and just having the (Paris Agreement) rulebook would be enough, we know that it is not enough. We need to go from commitments from companies, governments and civil society now to action,” Toni emphasised.
Mexican lead negotiator Camila Zepeda welcomed this approach during a panel discussion at Climate Week and said the Dubai agreement would be the “north star” of Mexico’s new nationally determined contribution, an emissions-cutting plan that all countries must deliver before September.
Andreas Sieber, associate director of global policy and campaigns at advocacy group 350.org, praised the Brazilians for “finally pivoting to a language of delivery” and for linking the GST decision to tripling renewables and phasing out fossil fuels.
But “political signals alone won’t deliver outcomes,” he added. He called on them to “exercise clear, strategic diplomacy and throw [their] full political weight behind securing an ambitious formal COP30 outcome that actually accelerates the Global Stocktake and energy transition”.
Just Transition Work Programme
Governments also failed to reach agreement on the JTWP in Baku last year, with divisions on issues of human and labour rights, measures seen as restricting free trade, adaptation and emissions reductions.
A major bone of contention was whether to designate finance to support plans for a just transition, with developing countries wanting funding included and developed countries opposed.
Negotiations on this issue fell down the COP29 presidency’s list of priorities as the talks on the new finance goal became heated. It set up a last-minute contact group and presented a final draft to save the JTWP, but no agreement was reached.
After Baku setback, activists call for ‘just transition’ to be front and centre at COP30
The COP30 Presidency’s letter this week called the JTWP “a dynamic concept of paramount relevance to people’s real lives”, adding “let’s build on the discussions from COP29 and demonstrate ambition to agree on the scope and focus for this powerful concept”.
Anabella Rosemberg, who follows JTWP discussions for Climate Action Network International, said “the pace [of negotiations] will have to be accelerated to make up for the lost time since COP29”.
But, she added, “a solid agreement” on just transition is “within reach”. “The COP30 Presidency is sending the right signal,” she said. “Time for governments to seize the opportunity.”
Global goal on adaptation
The third negotiating track highlighted by the new COP30 letter is the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), which it said should be “a robust framework to track collective progress”.
Corrêa do Lago told reporters that adaptation – meaning becoming more resilient to the impacts of climate change – “has become absolutely central because climate change change is here”.
The GGA is a set of 11 targets for adaptation which government negotiators are hoping to agree how to measure, using a set of indicators which they must fix at COP30, after slow progress at COP29.
Negotiators have been divided on whether to include adaptation finance to meet these goals, with developed countries against and developing nations in favour.
Governments have also struggled to agree on how to define, measure and track progress on broad issues like how improved water supply or sanitation can help people adjust better to climate change.
Baku-Belém roadmap
One issue that will not be negotiated, Corrêa do Lago clarified to reporters, is the Baku-Belém roadmap on how to mobilise $1.3 trillion a year of climate finance from all sources, in addition to an agreed $300 billion of public finance annually by 2035.
The COP30 top diplomat said he would work with Azerbaijan’s COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev to launch this roadmap at COP30, after extensive consultation with governments – including finance ministers – and other “stakeholders” around the world. A draft roadmap will be published on September 8. “I believe it can be a very interesting document but we’re still in listening mode,” he said.
Azerbaijani lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev told Climate Week’s opening ceremony that success “will now depend less on what governments agree and more on what nations deliver”.
Comment: Let’s use early milestones to stay focused on climate action
“We are calling on donors to set out how they will deliver their fair share of the $300bn that they pledged in Baku. We are making sure that they are focused on early milestones,” said Rafiyev, who added that as part of that, developed countries must double adaptation finance this year compared to 2019 levels and by 2030 reach the $300bn climate finance target.
Juan Carlos Navarro, environment minister of Panama and host of Climate Week, demanded “clear targets” on the financial contributions of developed nations, adding that “only if we have clarity and achieve concrete outcomes will we be able to succeed”.
Call to avoid agenda fight
Previous mid-year climate talks in Bonn have been marked by lengthy debates on what should be on the agenda. For example, in 2023, a debate over how to include finance and emissions-cutting measures in the formal discussions continued for seven days.
At COP28 and COP29, a proposal by the BASIC group of emerging economies – which includes Brazil – to discuss the EU and US’s alleged “unilateral restrictive trade measures” proved controversial and eventually unsuccessful.
The COP30 Presidency’s letter this week said it is “advisable to avoid introducing potentially contentious new agenda items that could further burden the [UN climate negotiation] process or detract from agreed priorities”.
The letter also acknowledged “ongoing calls for COPs reform” and said that, as COPs are moving from “a negotiation-centered to an implementation-centered era”, governments should “consider the future of the process itself” – and come up with solutions to challenges like an excessive number of agenda items and barriers that prevent the participation of smaller country delegations.
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Brazil seeks early deals on two stalled issues at Bonn climate talks
Electrification of transportation and the power grid all but require lithium to make batteries—but mining it takes a toll on delicate ecosystems. Still, there are reasons for hope.
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Thea Riofrancos, the author of “Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism.”
A new panel of experts, bringing together some of the world’s top climate scientists, has called on governments to develop roadmaps for phasing out fossil fuels “anchored in science and justice”.
Launched on Friday in Santa Marta, Colombia, along with a set of 12 initial policy recommendations, the panel’s appeal came ahead of a key ministerial meeting on equitable ways to reduce dependence on coal, oil and gas during next week’s “First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels”.
Sixty countries head to Santa Marta to cement coalition for fossil fuel transition
Presenting the panel’s recommendations in a packed Santa Marta Theatre, Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), said the push for a global transition away from fossil fuels offers “a light in the tunnel” during a “very dark moment” of geopolitical conflict and climate extremes.
“Science is here to serve,” Rockström said. “We’re today launching the Science Panel for the Global Energy Transition (SPGET) as a service, as a global common good for all countries, all sectors, all regions to connect to the best science enabling a transition away from fossil fuels.”
The panel is urging countries to create “whole-of-government” plans to “dismantle legal, financial and political barriers” to the energy transition. Its insights are intended to inform top officials from 57 governments who will gather in Santa Marta for high-level discussions on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Draft roadmap for Colombia
Colombian Environment Minister Irene Vélez Torres said the panel “addresses a longstanding shortcoming” in international climate science, by creating a scientific body dedicated solely to overcoming the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.
“It’s a first-of-its-kind, designed to organise in the next five years the scientific evidence that allows cities, regions, countries and coalitions to take the big leap,” Vélez told the event in Santa Marta.
As an example of how countries can move forward – even when their economies are closely tied to the production and use of dirty energy – a group of European scientists presented a draft roadmap to phase out fossil fuels in Colombia, with inputs from the Colombian government. It will be used as a basis for further consultation in the Latin American nation to define the way forward.
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Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds and co‑author of the roadmap, said it shows “a clear pathway to economic and societal benefit”, with average annual investment of $10.6 billion producing net economic benefits of $23 billion per year by 2050.
The document says fossil fuels in Colombia can be phased out through energy efficiency measures, coupling renewable generation with energy storage, and switching to electrified transport. But, it adds, the government will need to plan for reduced revenue from fossil fuel exports, which roughly half by the mid-2030s.
“What matters now is moving beyond headline targets to create credible, policy-relevant roadmaps, enabling a just and effective transition,” Forster said in a statement. Brazil is also working on a national roadmap for its own economy, as well as leading a voluntary process to produce a global roadmap.
IPCC hobbled by politics
Currently, the world’s top climate science body – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – requires countries to sign off on each “summary for policymakers” of its flagship science reports. This has led to a politically fraught process that has increasingly seen some oil-producing governments making efforts to weaken its recommendations.
In a bid to focus scientific debates on the phase-out of fossil fuels, the new SPGET was created based on a mandate from last year’s COP30. It is also meant to come up with scientific recommendations at a faster pace than the IPCC’s seven-year cycle.
Natalie Jones, senior policy advisor at the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD), called the new scientific panel “historic”, as it will be “more specific, more targeted and potentially more agile” with its advice on phasing out coal, oil and gas than the IPCC’s exhaustive scientific synthesis reports.
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One of the SPGET members, Peter Newell of the UK’s University of Sussex, said “there are many different challenges along the way – and not all of them have to do with lack of evidence”, but the phasing out of fossil fuels “is one part of the story and it’s important to address it”.
The panel will be co-chaired by Cameroonian economist Vera Songwe, PIK’s chief economist Ottmar Edenhofer and Gilberto M. Jannuzzi, professor of energy systems at Brazil’s Universidade Estadual de Campinas. It will be composed of between 50 and 100 scientists divided into four working groups: transition pathways, technological solutions, policies and finance.
Under the 12 insights for the Santa Marta process, the panel recommended banning new fossil fuel infrastructure, mandating “deep cuts” in methane emissions, implementing carbon levies on imports, and de-risking clean energy investments via interventions from central banks, among others.
The post New panel of climate scientists calls for fossil fuel transition roadmaps appeared first on Climate Home News.
New panel of climate scientists calls for fossil fuel transition roadmaps
Despite not yet paying out any money, a UN-backed fund meant to address the loss and damage caused to developing countries by climate change could face “liquidity issues” by the end of next year, its head warned today.
With ten projects already requesting $166 million in total, the fund’s Executive Director Ibrahima Cheikh Diong warned a board meeting in Zambia that the fund was likely to be “oversubscribed” and should anticipate cashflow problems.
A framing paper prepared by the fund’s secretariat similarly warns that “given the current status of the capitalization of the Fund, there is a risk of the Fund exhausting its capital by the end of 2027, which could result in a loss of operational momentum and expose the FRLD to reputational risk”.
Since governments agreed to set up the fund at UN climate talks in Egypt in 2022, wealthy nations have promised $822 million, but delivered just $449 million.
The fund is expected to approve its first projects at its next board meeting in July. Early proposals submitted include strengthening responses to floods in Bangladesh and the Nigerian city of Lagos, and improving water infrastructure in Jamaica following Hurricane Melissa last year.
Millions not billions
ActionAid Zambia climate justice coordinator Michael Mwansa told the board meeting that he was concerned about “the failure of the Global North governments to deliver on their climate finance obligations, making it largely impossible to scale up [the fund’s initial stage] significantly, if at all”.
“Pledges remain nowhere near the billions and even the trillions needed to address loss and damage to the Global South”, Mwansa added, highlighting reports which found that financing loss and damage could cost developing countries up to $400 billion a year.
The fund’s board discussed its strategy for raising more money at its meeting this week while climate campaigners called, in an open letter, for it to aim to secure $50 billion a year from developed countries starting next year, rising to $100 billion a year by 2031 and $400 billion by 2035.
The World Bank-hosted fund aims to have revenue-raising rounds known as replenishments every four years, with the first in 2027.
Governments have agreed to “urge” developed countries to contribute but only to “encourage” other nations to do so and the fund’s secretariat wants to appoint a “high-level champion” to lead the replenishment team.
The fundraising strategy will be discussed further at the next board meeting in the Philipines in June.
Campaigners’ open letter calls for developed countries to contribute more and for them to introduce taxes on fossil fuel companies, financial transactions, luxury air travel and wealth to raise money for the fund.
“Rich countries must be held strictly accountable for the devastation they have caused,” said Climate Action Network International head Tasneem Essop. “Their failure to fulfil their responsibility to the Loss and Damage Fund is not just an oversight; it is a shameful betrayal of humanity.”
The post New loss and damage fund could run out of money next year appeared first on Climate Home News.
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