TURNING POINT TOWARDS BELEM: INTERMEDIATE STOP IN BONN
In the year marking the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement, before turning the spotlight on the eagerly awaited Brazilian COP at the end of the year, climate diplomacy will stop, as usual, in Bonn, Germany, for the UNFCCC interim climate negotiations. The SB62 negotiating session, in technical jargon, will be held in the former German capital from 16 to 26 June, in a partially reduced form compared to previous years, partly due to budget cuts resulting from the withdrawal of the United States.
The two technical bodies that accompany and prepare the COPs each year, SBI and SBSTA (with roles supporting the Secretariat and countries), will meet in Germany with a very busy agenda and numerous points in common between the two negotiating rooms.
In particular, the common points include the possible reopening of talks on how to proceed with the preparation of the next climate action inventory (the Global Stocktake) towards 2028, those on the Work Programme on Mitigation, which tragically failed in Baku a few months ago, and on the Work Programme on Just Transition. In addition to these issues, there are ordinary negotiating points, such as discussions on the Secretariat’s budget for the two-year period 2026-2027 (a very delicate discussion this year, given the cuts) and a continuation, now cyclical and perhaps without hope of success, of negotiations on how to define non-market approaches under Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement.
It is difficult to predict whether some of the most difficult areas of negotiation will actually be reopened in Bonn, which many consider to be a technical negotiation. In particular, the two work programmes on Mitigation and Just Transition have had mixed fortunes in recent years, with the former sacrificed politically in Baku on the altar of the agreement on the new global climate finance target (NCQG), much to the regret of the European Union and the most fragile countries. However, the Brazilian Presidency’s political construction of COP30, which is still ongoing, could offer political and negotiating opportunities to restart conversations that were considered deadlocked in previous contexts.
Not only that. These interim negotiations will be driven not only by the Brazilian Presidency’s side initiatives, however commendable and visionary, but also – and this seems paradoxical, but perhaps it is just the beginning of a change in the political atmosphere – by good news from China, which seems to have truly reached and exceeded its peak emissions, and from the European Union, which despite an unforgivable delay in presenting its climate targets (NDC) for 2035, is now aligned with its decarbonisation targets for 2030, as revealed by a recent report. This is an unexpected injection of optimism about the effectiveness of policies in two of the world’s three main climate-changing players, with the United States now a distant backdrop – even though its emissions continue to affect us all.
Finally, the interim climate negotiations in Bonn will also see some side events, so to speak, but it will be important to keep an eye on them. In particular, we would like to highlight the annual dialogue on oceans, a sector that is increasingly at the centre of climate policies, given the importance of oceans both as a possible eco-technological vector in new techniques for removing and storing excess CO2, and a special update event organised by the IPCC.