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Dubai pledges “at risk”
Although it now feels like a different lifetime, it was only 18 months ago that UN climate boss Simon Stiell hailed “the beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era.
At COP28 in Dubai, all countries agreed to a suite of collective actions – including transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, tripling renewables, and halting and reversing deforestation – in response to their failure to keep climate goals on track as demonstrated by the Global Stocktake.
But that breakthrough is now “at risk” unless the delivery of those promises is urgently speeded up, Jennifer Morgan, an architect of that landmark COP28 deal and until recently Germany’s climate envoy, told an audience at London Climate Action Week.
Campaigners issue mass call for reforms to rescue UN climate process
How to do that? One obvious place would be the dedicated “dialogue on implementing the Global Stocktake outcomes” at the UN climate talks. But discussions in that negotiating track broke down at COP29 in the face of concerted resistance by oil-exporting countries. Now, in Bonn, they appear to be heading in a similar direction with no shared understanding even on the purpose of this space.
Developed countries, small-island states and the AILAC group of Latin American nations want to put the focus on “collective progress” towards meeting the GST goals, ideally by holding an annual ministerial summit and producing reports. But others including the Like-Minded Developing Countries – which counts China and Saudi Arabia among its members – and India have pushed back, saying this forum should not become an assessment mechanism or set new targets, according to a summary of discussions published by the Earth Negotiations Bulletin.
Brazil: Let’s deliver on our old climate promises before making new ones
The elephant in the room is finance. CAN International’s Shreeshan Venkatesh said the “weak decision” on that in Baku – where developed countries agreed to deliver $300 billion per year by 2035 – is “leaving a mark and stopping a constructive, progressive decision from being made here”.
Over in London, Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s climate envoy, warned that without addressing the “centrepiece of climate change” – finance – “it is difficult to get any significant outcome in Belém”.
The pressure is on Brazil, which only a week ago pinned the implementation of the GST goals to the top of its action agenda for this year’s summit. “The time of finger pointing is gone,” said COP30 CEO Ana Toni on Tuesday, calling for a “mature” debate on the energy transition.
Shuttling between stuffy rooms in Bonn and glitzy events in London over the last week, she said it was in the UK capital that she saw “real life moving”. “We haven’t been able as yet to translate that real life to the negotiation rooms,” Toni added. “The transition is inevitable. We need to capture that and bring it into politics”.
How that will be reflected into the final outcome in Belém is still far from clear. One option would be to produce a “cover decision” which often provides a home to stranded and politically -fraught discussions. In a recent letter, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) urged COP30 President André Correa do Lago to seriously consider that possibility.
But speaking to Climate Home last week, Toni made clear that COP30 would rather not go down that route. “We don’t want to use the very precious time of negotiators to get out of the room to negotiate something else rather than deepen the debate about the topics they are already discussing,” she said.
Turkiye makes COP31 case
With one day of the Bonn climate talks left, the fight between Australia and Turkiye over who gets to host COP31 next year has yet to be resolved – despite strong support for Australia from the “Western Europe and Others” group of countries that will make the decision.
Many expected Turkiye to drop its bid, but it doubled down today, with a major charm offensive. Its delegation in Bonn held two receptions – with soft drinks and snacks – and delivered a presentation on why the southern Turkish resort city of Antalya and its huge Expo centre should host COP31.
Part of its pitch is that Antalya has lots of hotels and flight connections – something COP30’s host city Belém is sorely lacking. Its presentation claimed it has 628,000 beds, golf courses, great food and tourist attractions like the Roman ruins of Side.
“Antalya is ready to host a low-carbon global gathering,” the Hollywood-style voiceover said in a promotional video over a graphic of planes converging on Antalya. The argument is that its “central location” will minimise air miles, while Turkiye sees itself as a bridge between East and West, and developed and developing countries.
The presentation promoted Turkiye’s green credentials as an “economy not dependent on fossil fuels”. It wasn’t mentioned explicitly, but rival Australia is a major fossil fuel exporter. Wary of the attraction of Australia’s co-operation with the Pacific islands for COP31, Turkiye’s presentation also mentioned the Pacific several times.
Australia, meanwhile, wants to host the COP in its southern city of Adelaide – a pioneer in renewable energy. The UNFCCC wants a decision on the COP31 host to be made here in Bonn so that whoever is chosen has more than a year to prepare.
Fund the firefighters
“THE WORLD IS ON FIRE. FUND THE FIRE DEPARTMENT” – that was the no-nonsense message, replete with fire emojis, that the UNFCCC’s deputy head Noura Hamladji posted on Linkedin yesterday. The UNFCCC secretariat is the body that organises the UN climate talks and keeps work going throughout the year.
Hamladji was referring to negotiations on how much money governments should give the UNFCCC – the metaphorical fire-fighters – for 2026-2027 so that it can carry out the ever-growing list of activities governments have told it to do.
The two options in the latest draft text are for the budget for 2026-2027 to be around the same as 2024-2025 – $74m over the two years. Or for a 24% increase up to $92m.
A note from UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said that, without an increase, the sustainability of the UNFCCC process and of the secretariat would be jeopardised.
At a meeting today, governments told the UNFCCC to draw up two budgets with around a 10% increase and a 19% increase, according to three sources in the room.
They added that Saudi Arabia said they did not have a mandate to go above 10%. And the UK – which wants 24% – proposed 19% as a compromise.
This will disappoint the UNFCCC and those who rely on its work. Even with the 24% increase, which Stiell calls a “proposed core budget”, the UN climate chief says the UNFCCC would not have enough to cover its “essential” programmes and support activities.
It would also disappoint the small islands of AOSIS. Their finance negotiator Thibyan Ibrahim told Climate Home they want the secretariat’s 24%.
What Stiell calls an “actual needs scenario” of $109m is currently off the table. It is not an option in the draft negotiating text.
Without enough money to fulfill its functions, the UNFCCC would need to raise supplementary funding from voluntary contributions from governments and other sources like philanthropies – such as Michael Bloomberg who has stepped in to fill the hole left by the US government under Trump.
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Bonn bulletin: Waiting for a plan to rescue COP28 breakthrough
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Countries have completed the first “global review” of their progress towards reversing nature loss by 2030 at the COP17 biodiversity talks in Yerevan, Armenia.
The review “notes with deep concern” that, unless action is “rapidly accelerated”, the goal to reverse nature loss and meet a set of 23 targets by 2030 “will not be achieved”.
It “urges” countries to accelerate action, including by “increased ambition in addressing the gaps”.
Much of the discussions in Yerevan focused on how to raise the necessary funds to help developing countries protect nature.
Some major economies pushed to expand the range of nations that are expected to provide finance, with countries agreeing at the end of the two weeks of talks that non-donors that want to contribute can “signal interest” before COP18.
This came after developed countries failed to meet a target to significantly ramp up nature finance over the last few years.
It also came as a landmark fund agreed at COP16 in Colombia to pay communities for the genetic resources derived from nature stands nearly empty two years on.
The Yerevan talks marked the halfway point of the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF), the “Paris Agreement for nature” first made in 2022 and due to be achieved by 2030.
During the nearly 12-hour-long final plenary, countries voted for Quito, Ecuador, to host the COP18 nature talks, which will be held in 2028.
Countries managed to sign off on all the major negotiation texts, marking a stark contrast to COP16, which ran so far over time that the Colombian presidency lost “quorum”, forcing talks to resume in Rome months later.
Below, Carbon Brief has detailed analysis of all of the key outcomes from COP17.
Formal negotiations
Finance
Finance, predictably, was at the heart of the discord and deadlock at the Yerevan talks.
At COP17, discussions on finance had to achieve several outcomes.
The first part – to take stock of biodiversity finance mobilised so far to meet the nature deal’s goals – fell under the global review.
As the global report noted, developed countries failed to meet their commitments to raise “at least $20bn a year by 2025” for nature. Delegates pointed to falling aid levels and a sharp 27% decline in environmental funding for the 2026-30 period.
The second part was to agree on how to mobilise resources for the next four years, to meet the GBF’s goals and targets.
Calls to “broaden the contributor base” of who pays to protect nature – and whether that should include emerging economies – became the most fraught element of the talks.
Eventually, countries agreed on what Switzerland described as a “super, mega-delicate” text. It hinged on major “political compromises”, with “no major winner or loser”, according to Kenya.
Per the decision, countries that want to be included on a list of developed country donors can “signal interest” through bilateral, confidential consultations before COP18 and every alternate COP after.
Finally, countries also agreed on criteria to shape and resource a new, permanent financial mechanism to protect nature after 2030.
However, this did not immediately take the form of a new fund under the COP that biodiverse countries have demanded since 2022, deferring the mechanism’s institutional structure to COP18.
Resource mobilisation discussions at the GBF’s halfway mark were supposed to agree on how to close the “biodiversity finance gap” and to “increase resources from all sources” to “at least” $200bn per year by 2030, as set out in target 19 of the GBF.
The talks were largely dominated by a push, led by the JUSCANZ bloc of developed countries, to “broaden the contributor base”. This could see emerging economies, such as Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia and India, being added to the list of countries that pay to protect nature.
Article 20 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) states that developed countries “shall provide new and additional financial resources” to developing countries to meet the costs of implementing measures to protect nature.
The text states that other countries – including emerging economies – may “voluntarily assume” these obligations to pay. However, it adds that this list of developed countries “shall” be reviewed periodically and amended “if necessary”.
The list was last amended in 2006.
(See this “jargon buster” which explains the specific meaning and legal weight of various terms and verbs used in UN formal documents.)
Discussions around this fraught subject had reached a dead end at intersessional talks this year, but resurfaced in Yerevan.
The first “non-paper” had four different options for expanding the contributor base. These ranged from using the World Bank’s country income groups “as a proxy” to identify high-income countries, to commissioning a study on the impacts of being included on the list.
By 21 October, the number of options swelled to eight, including two from Saudi Arabia and one from Peru.
Some countries “expressed concern” that certain options were based on a CBD secretariat study on “what constitutes a developed country”, Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported.
By the end of the first week, it was clear that the finance deadlock would have to go into informal ministerial consultations for any consensus to emerge.
At a press conference on 28 October, Christopher O’Sullivan, Ireland’s nature minister and representing the EU delegation, told Carbon Brief:
“Our position isn’t that we want to pull back in terms of contributing…but it’s been 20 years since that list was added to, times have changed and there are new realities. We just simply want those new realities reflected. I don’t fully understand why there’s so much opposition to that.”
The EU chose not to comment on which countries it would like to see on that list.
Lim Li Ching from the Third World Network, meanwhile, called the push for others to “assume the obligations” of developed countries “sheer hypocrisy”, adding that any country could make a voluntary contribution. She told Carbon Brief:
“At a forum like the CBD, this linking of income status with finance does not take into account where historical and current responsibilities lie. If you want to generate more funding for biodiversity, let’s look at sovereign debt burdens and rules, which are inequitable for developing countries. But if you can fund wars, and provide resources for your defence industry, then you know where the priorities are.”
On 29 October – at a plenary meant to adopt final texts for the most contentious subjects – Norway’s Gaute Hanssen announced that resource-mobilisation discussions would go into a smaller “friends of the chair” meeting.
Facilitated by Carolina Caceres from Canada and Imèn Meliane from Tunisia, the meeting would discuss the most contentious elements of a draft decision that had swelled to 112 brackets, denoting areas of disagreement on specific details in the text.
While the meeting was open to all, countries that were called to be present included Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, the EU, Fiji, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the UK.
At the same time, a “non-paper” text by finance and environment ministers laid out countries’ red lines and compromises.
At the end of COP17, countries welcomed a final compromise text, with Kenya thanking the “strong women” co-chairs who strove to strike a “delicate” balance.
China, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Fiji cautioned against any further interventions, with Brazil warning: “If we open this text, we will never close it again.”
While the final decision “recognises” that “contributions from more parties would improve the mobilisation” of biodiversity finance, it steered away from issuing criteria to expand the list of donor countries.
The text makes it clear that no additions to the list would be made without inviting and confidentially consulting with interested countries, to secure their explicit consent.
Instead, the CBD secretariat “invites” countries keen to be on the list and “assume the obligations” of developed countries to “signal interest” before COP18 and at every alternate COP thereafter.
At the same time, developing countries can contribute to meeting the GBF and biodiversity convention’s goals on a “voluntary basis”, with contributions not implying inclusion on the list.
A negotiator for China told Carbon Brief at the closing plenary:
“We welcome this balanced document. It was a very long discussion that has gone [on] since [2022 nature talks in] Nairobi. But actually this time, there were a lot of sensitive issues, [there were] a lot of critical things we didn’t open in the contact groups; it mainly went to the high-level discussion.”
The decision also establishes a financial mechanism for nature funding after 2030 under the governance of the COP, a key ask from developing countries.
However, it defers decisions on what form this mechanism would take – whether this would be a new fund or based on existing arrangements – until COP18.
Oscar Soria at the Common Initiative told Carbon Brief that the decision on the financial mechanism leaves things “very open”, with “no movement” towards a new fund or money and no upgrades to existing funding arrangements.
The text acknowledges the links between debt and biodiversity eight times, mentioning how debt-related instruments can be included in biodiversity plans, but does not go further.
“It is almost as if the debt studies they called for at COP16 didn’t happen,” said Soria, who had earlier flagged serious methodological issues with the first-ever COP-commissioned report on debt and biodiversity.
Global review
In Yerevan, countries agreed on the first stocktake of progress towards the 2030 nature targets – known as the “global review”.
The review was one of the keenly anticipated outcomes from COP17 and was seen as less controversial than some of the other major negotiation strands.
It was swiftly signed off by countr