JUNE CLIMATE MEETINGS IN BONN: ITALIAN CLIMATE NETWORK ANALYSIS

On the evening of Thursday, June 18, the Bonn June Climate Meetings (SB64) officially concluded. This was a key appointment to lay the groundwork ahead of COP31 on climate, scheduled for November in Turkey. Until a few years ago, the June Climate Meetings were predominantly technical in nature, a factor that historically facilitated dialogue and allowed for significant progress away from the spotlight and the pressure of high-level politics. However, since COP30, we have entered a new phase, and it shows: this year, the negotiating rooms were heavily politicized. Significant international divisions hindered progress on most dossiers, resulting in cross-cutting rifts: developed nations were often accused of trying to divert attention from the financial commitments made in Belém, while developing countries dug in on defensive positions regarding further commitments.

Although climate negotiations take place within a framework of multilateral dialogue, delegations are not entirely disconnected from external reality. As highlighted by many civil society observers, the speed with which governments mobilize financial resources for the military sector and for managing geopolitical crises contrasts sharply with the stalemate and fragmentation that continue to hold back the allocation of resources (both material and political) for climate change. The urgency of climate action cannot always be sidelined by geopolitical contingency; rather, it is an integral part of it.

The negotiations were marked by strong collective frustration, which peaked on Thursday evening when a last-minute agreement failed to be reached on the creation of a task force on the Global Goal on Adaptation – which would have been a compromise solution anyway. Bonn offered only one true positive exception: the negotiating table on just transition, the only one capable of making concrete progress during the two weeks of work, thanks to the approval of a preliminary text heading into COP31.

Below is the analysis of the main negotiating themes by the Italian Climate Network delegation, which followed the climate negotiations directly from Bonn:

• Just transition
• Adaptation
• Mitigation
• Global stocktake
• Climate finance

Just transition

The Just Transition negotiating table made the most concrete progress during the two weeks in Bonn, yet even here, the deep divisions running through the negotiations were evident. Parties managed to review all three key themes scheduled for the June Climate Meetings. Although not exhaustively and with several core issues still lacking a shared position, the negotiations nevertheless led to the production of a text, endorsed during the closing plenary, and a brief informal note. The latter includes key messages from the Fifth Dialogue, a placeholder on the review of the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP), and an initial systematization of the proposals raised regarding the Just Transition Mechanism (JTM).

The text endorsed by the delegates is accompanied by an important annex containing the Terms of Reference (ToR) for the review of the Just Transition Work Programme. The annex defines the mandate, objectives, scope, sources of input, modalities, and the expected outcome of the review exercise. Work on the ToR, originally conceived to be swift to leave room for the more politically sensitive discussions on the Mechanism, was slowed down by a block placed by Saudi Arabia on paragraph 6 (d) regarding the sources of inputs that should serve as the starting point for the JTWP review. Furthermore, the text invites Parties and other stakeholders to submit their views on the review of the work programme by September 1, 2026. Finally, the Chairs of the Subsidiary Bodies are encouraged to consider holding further informal discussions before COP31, subject to the availability of resources from the Secretariat.

The other hot topic at this working table, namely the discussion on how to operationalize the Just Transition Mechanism established at COP30, remained mostly exploratory, failing to find real convergence. In Bonn, a clear rift emerged between groups wishing to turn it into an engine for further ambition and those fearing it could impose new obligations regarding the phase-out of fossil fuels, thereby infringing upon national decisions and policies. Despite expectations that the Mechanism would be one of the central themes heading into COP31, the debate stalled. The work to be done in Antalya will therefore be long and complex, with crucial issues still unresolved: what form will the Mechanism take (will it be a new tool based on the co-chairs’ mapping, or similar to the proposals of civil society’s Belém Action Mechanism – BAM), how will it relate to the Global Stocktake and national climate targets, and through what resources will implementation and monitoring tools be created? This will be discussed further at COP31.

Adaptation

In Bonn, the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) found itself at a crossroads.

Following COP30 – which was marked by the definition of the Belém indicators, the closure of the UAE-Belém Work Programme, and the launch of the Belém-Addis Vision – the negotiations were supposed to transition from architecture building to practical implementation. Instead, Bonn demonstrated just how difficult it is to take that next step.

As with other tables, the discussion on financial aspects slowed down the work here as well. The rift emerged immediately over the reference to tripling adaptation finance by 2035. Many developing countries called for tying the GGA explicitly to resources, while developed countries sought to exclude finance from this negotiating space. The result was a short circuit: everyone called for implementation, but not everyone wanted to discuss what makes it possible. Excluding finance from the discussion does not make the negotiation more technical; it makes it less grounded in reality. Without funds, it will be impossible even to collect data and utilize the new indicators. The risk is that the GGA will only work for those who already have institutional capacity (at ministerial, university, and research center levels), becoming a mere administrative burden for the most vulnerable and least equipped countries.

Furthermore, tripling funds might not even be enough: potentially, a quantitative increase (even if significant) might not guarantee the quality of the resources, such as grants and direct access, nor cover actual needs. However, amid cuts to development aid and geopolitical crises, the political weight of such declarations is fundamental: it measures the real willingness of the Global North to honor the promise of Belém. This is especially true given that we are not talking about new finance, but rather a share of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) already adopted at COP29. A decision made in 2024 and defined in 2025 should not become controversial in 2026, precisely within the negotiation tasked with making the Global Goal on Adaptation operational.

Discussing the text to be forwarded to COP31 was not easy. After days of bracketed text, deletion requests, and tense consultations, the text was handed over to the Chairs of the SBSTA and SBI to avoid a formal deferral of the dossier, possibly through a compromise proposal.

The compromise would have provided for the establishment of a task force (an idea supported, moreover, by the European Union) to define metadata and methodologies for the Belém indicators and therefore, in short, to carry out the technical setup work while waiting for better times to discuss resources. The proposed body would have comprised up to 40 independent experts nominated by UN regional groups, least developed countries, and small island developing states. It was to be led by two co-facilitators (one from a developed country and one from a developing country) under the guidance of the subsidiary bodies, with the aim of concluding work by SB67 in November 2027.

On one hand, this solution was designed to prevent the work on indicators from fading away after the limited successes of COP30; on the other hand, it confirmed that a large part of the operational core of the GGA remains technical work.

The entire proposal then collapsed due to a lack of consensus during the chaotic hours of the final plenaries. The central bone of contention was the potential composition of the task force: a political body, a technical body of experts, or a hybrid solution? At the last minute on Thursday night, amid widespread frustration among most countries present, a lack of consensus in the room was acknowledged, and the issue was entirely postponed to COP31—to the frustration of the majority of the countries present (particularly developing nations, but also the European Union and the United Kingdom).

Mitigation

The negotiation on the Mitigation Work Programme (MWP) has always been one of the most controversial and tense dossiers, and this year in Bonn was no exception. The dispute is broad and ranges from the modalities to the scope of the programme, extending to its very continuation beyond COP31. Indeed, according to developed countries, small islands (AOSIS), and AILAC, the work programme must continue to ensure a permanent space within the UNFCCC process for mitigation; other developing countries, however, wonder why they should continue if the programme has achieved no concrete results so far. If there is no change of course, it is better to close a programme that is consuming energy without having successfully reduced even one single ton of greenhouse gas emissions, Colombia warned – denouncing how procedural obstructionism is killing multilateralism.

Regarding the objective, developed nations, AILAC, and AOSIS are pushing for the work programme to be a space to increase ambition. For them, the MWP should be a two-way space, capable of building upon the Global Stocktake while simultaneously influencing it. The goal is to close the ambition gap and keep 1.5°C alive, including by shaping decisions within the programme that influence the CMA (the governing body of the Paris Agreement under the UNFCCC) to send political signals. Other developing countries, such as the African Group, the Arab Group, and the LMDCs, want instead to focus on the other core element of the work programme’s mandate: implementation. To this end, it should help countries secure the means of implementation (i.e., finance, technology transfer, and capacity building). The final consultation also took place within this tense atmosphere and – despite mediation efforts by Brazil, which sought compromises to keep the dialogue open and provide political continuity to the work ahead of COP31 – it was impossible to reach an agreement on the documents intended to reflect the various positions that emerged during the review of the programme.

The discussion will continue in the next negotiations, with the aim of reaching a decision at CMA8.

Global stocktake

SB64 in Bonn closed one chapter of the Global Stocktake—the “global inventory” provided for by the Paris Agreement to assess the state of global climate action every five years—and opened another. After years spent debating what the United Arab Emirates Dialogue should be, what its purpose should be, with what inputs, under what method, and with what link to finance, the dialogue finally took place. This is a point that should not be underestimated: it was the space designed to understand how to turn the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake (GST1), adopted in Dubai, into concrete measures and actions.

Perhaps the most positive data came from the UNFCCC Secretariat: 90% of the new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted between June 2024 and June 2026 state, at least verbally, that they are based on the first Global Stocktake (GST1). This is a politically useful signal, but it is not enough to guarantee that the mechanism functions. In the UN registry, 53 NDCs are still missing, despite the deadline being in February 2025, and above all, it remains to be seen whether the references to the GST in national plans represent a genuine change of course or a mere boilerplate formula.

In Bonn, all the unresolved issues that had already emerged at COP30 came to a head: the phase-out of fossil fuels, adaptation, loss and damage, finance, technologies, international cooperation, and unilateral trade measures. All Parties claim they want to operationalize the outcomes of the first GST, but tension rises when it comes to specifying the resources, responsibilities, and tools to actually do so.

The outcome is therefore cautious but useful: the dialogue did not resolve the major imbalances in climate implementation, but it did bring the long tail of GST1 to a conclusion. Now the center of gravity shifts to the second Global Stocktake, which will formally begin at COP31 and conclude in 2028 at COP33. It is there that we will see whether the first Global Stocktake was just a highly debated inventory, or if it can become the first stepping stone toward a more effective path. A new cycle reopens from COP31: it no longer needs to answer the question “where do we stand?” but must verify, with new data and fewer political alibis, whether climate multilateralism is truly correcting its course relative to the original goals of the 1992 Convention and subsequently the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Climate finance

SB64 served as the first, tense testing ground for the new Work Programme (WP) on climate finance, established in the Global Mutirão at COP30 under strong pressure from the G77 + China bloc. The three Engagement workshops held here in Bonn revealed a political rift, starting with considerations regarding the actual operational status of the text. Many developing countries reject the work plan proposed by the co-chairs, arguing that the process cannot be considered officially underway until a new structured, party-driven path—meaning one directly led by member states—is negotiated. This mediation might only take place at COP31, thereby delaying the actual launch of the programme. Conversely, many developed countries believe that the mechanism can already be considered fully operational and that its conclusion must strictly coincide with COP32 in November 2027.

The definition of the programme’s objective also sees deeply contrasting visions, with divisions running through the very front of the developing countries themselves. For India, China, and the Arab Group, the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance should not include an operational but rather a necessary interpretation of Article 9.1, which establishes the obligation of developed countries to provide public resources to developing ones; the programme should therefore specifically quantify and measure this compliance, which is still considered unfulfilled.

Taking a different view are the groups of small islands and most vulnerable countries, such as AOSIS, AILAC, and the LDCs, who prefer to place Article 9.1 within the framework of the NCQG without creating new targets, focusing instead on clarifying what share of the 300 billion dollars per year by 2035 will be covered by public funds.

On the opposing side, developed countries, criticized for allegedly failing to meet their commitments, reject the accusations by defending the transparency of their financial flows and demand that the programme address the NCQG in its entirety, focusing also on mobilizing private capital and broadening the donor base to include emerging countries with economic capacity.

To complicate the picture further, an element has been introduced that risks triggering a harsh clash during the adoption of the COP31 agenda, potentially blocking work before it even begins. Indeed, the WP is a decision produced by the Global Mutirão and not directly by the CMA (Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement), the supreme body of the UNFCCC governing the Paris Agreement. Consequently, the text does not guarantee the programme an autonomous item on the COP31 negotiating agenda. The doubt here is not whether the WP has a basis within the CMA (it does), but it remains unclear whether this basis is sufficient to automatically grant it a formal slot on the upcoming agenda, or if the process must continue through workshops, consultations, and co-chairs’ summaries without a real decision-making moment legally part of the COP.

While for the G77 exclusion from the agenda would reduce the political centrality of the programme, for many developed nations the Belém agreement does not provide for the CMA to approve or formalize the outcomes of the work programme, which is seen as a lateral add-on to the negotiation.

Article prepared by the delegation of the Italian Climate Network.

Cover image: UN Climate Change | Lara Murillo