In the closing session of the two-week talks on Thursday evening, many countries expressed their disappointment and frustration at the lack of any outcome on the Mitigation Ambition and Implementation Work Programme (MWP), noting the urgency of stepping up efforts to curb greenhouse gas pollution this decade.

The co-chairs of the talks said those discussions had not reached any conclusion and would need to resume at the annual climate summit in Azerbaijan in November, unleashing a stream of disgruntled interventions from both developed and developing countries.

Samoa’s lead negotiator Anne Rasmussen, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), emphasised that “we really can’t afford these failures”. “We have failed to show the world that we are responding with the purpose and urgency required to limit warming to 1.5 degrees,” she said.

Anne Rasmussen of Samoa, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth

Governments, from Latin America to Africa and Europe, lamented the lack of progress on the MWP because of its central role in keeping warming to the 1.5C temperature ceiling enshrined in the Paris Agreement.

Current policies to cut emissions are forecast to lead to warming of 2.7C, even as the world is already struggling with worsening floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels at global average temperatures around 1.3C higher than pre-industrial times.

Mitigation a taboo topic?

Despite the clear need to act fast, a deep sense of mistrust seeped into talks on the MWP in Bonn, with negotiators disagreeing fundamentally over its direction, according to sources in the room.

Developed countries and some developing ones said that the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries (LMDCs), led primarily by Saudi Arabia and China, as well as some members of the African Group, had refused to engage constructively in the discussions.

“The reason is that they fear this would put pressure on them to keep moving away from fossil fuels,” an EU delegate told Climate Home.

Bonn bulletin: Fossil fuel transition left homeless

Bolivia’s Diego Pacheco, speaking on behalf of the LMDCs, rejected that view in the final plenary session, while describing the atmosphere in the MWP talks as “strange and shocking”. He also accused developed countries of trying to bury data showing their emissions will rise rather than fall over the course of this decade.

The EU and Switzerland said it was incomprehensible that a body charged with cutting greenhouse gas emissions had not even been allowed to discuss them.

“Mitigation must not be taboo as a topic,” said Switzerland’s negotiator, adding that otherwise the outcome and credibility of the COP29 summit would be at risk.

Rows over process

Before MWP negotiations broke down in Bonn, its co-facilitators – Kay Harrison of New Zealand and Carlos Fuller of Belize – had made a last-ditch attempt to rescue some semblance of progress.

They produced draft conclusions calling for new inputs ahead of COP29 and an informal note summarising the diverging views aired during the fraught exchanges. For many delegates, the adoption of those documents would have provided a springboard for more meaningful discussions in Baku.

But the LMDC and Arab groups refused to consider this, arguing that the co-facilitators had no mandate to produce them and calling their legitimacy into question – a claim rebutted by the UN climate secretariat, according to observers. Frantic efforts to find common ground ultimately came to nothing.

A session of the Mitigation Work Programme in Bonn. Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth

Fernanda de Carvalho, climate and energy policy head for green group WWF, said the MWP discussions must advance if the world is to collectively reduce emissions by 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 from 2019 levels, as scientists say is needed.

The MWP should be focused on supporting countries to deliver stronger national climate action plans (NDCs) – due by early next year – that set targets through to 2035, she said.

“Instead, we saw [government] Parties diverging way more than converging on hard discussions that never made it beyond process,” she added.

‘Collective amnesia’

Some developing countries, including the Africa Group, pushed back against what they saw as efforts by rich nations to force them to make bigger cuts in emissions while ducking their own responsibilities to move first and provide more finance to help poorer countries adopt clean energy.

Brazil – which will host the COP30 summit in 2025 – said the MWP was the main channel for the talks to be able to find solutions to put into practice the agreement struck at COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a fair way.

But to enable that, “we have to create a safe environment of trust that will leverage it as a cooperative laboratory”, he said, instead of the “courthouse” it has become “where we accuse and judge each other”.

Observers in Bonn pointed to the absence of discussions on implementing the COP28 deal on fossil fuels, which was hailed last December as “historic”.

“It seems like we have collective amnesia,” veteran watcher Alden Meyer, a senior associate at think-tank E3G, told journalists. “We’ve forgotten that we made that agreement. It’s taboo to talk about it in these halls.”

‘Detour on the road to Baku’

After the exchange of views, UN Climate Change executive secretary Simon Stiell noted that the Bonn talks had taken “modest steps forward” on issues like the global goal on adaptation, increased transparency of climate action and fixing the rules for a new global carbon market.

“But we took a detour on the road to Baku. Too many issues were left unresolved. Too many items are still on the table,” he added.

The closing plenary of the Bonn Climate Change Conference. Photo: Lucia Vasquez / UNFCCC

Another key area where the talks failed to make much progress was on producing clear options for ministers to negotiate a new post-2025 climate finance goal, as developed countries refused to discuss dollar amounts as demanded by the Africa and Arab groups, among others.

Bonn talks on climate finance goal end in stalemate on numbers

Developing nations also complained about this in the final session, while others expressed their concern that a separate track of the negotiations on scientific research had failed to address the topic in a rigorous enough manner.

In his closing speech, Stiell reminded countries that “we must uphold the science”, and urged them to accelerate their efforts to find common ground on key issues well ahead of COP29.

The next opportunities to move forward on the new finance goal – expected as the main outcome from the Baku summit – will be a “retreat” of heads of delegations in July followed by a technical meeting in October, including a high-level ministerial dialogue on the issue.

But several observers told Climate Home that highly contentious issues – such as the size of the funding pot and the list of donors – are beyond the remit of negotiators and are unlikely to be resolved until the political heavyweights, including ministers, take them up in Azerbaijan in November.

Rising costs of climate crisis

“Business-as-usual is a recipe for failure, on climate finance, and on many other fronts, in humanity’s climate fight,” Stiell said. “We can’t keep pushing this year’s issues off into the next year. The costs of the climate crisis – for every nation’s people and economy – are only getting worse.”

Mohamed Adow, director of Kenya-based energy and climate think-tank Power Shift Africa, warned that “multiple factors are setting us up for a terrible shock at COP29″, saying this “ticking disaster threatens to undermine” the NDCs and in turn the 1.5C warming limit.

North Africa’s disappearing nomads: Why my community needs climate finance

In comments posted on X, formerly Twitter, Adow called for justice for those dying from the impacts of climate change such as extreme heat in India and Sudan in recent days, arguing that climate finance remains “a vital part in securing a safe and secure future for us all”.

But, he said, Bonn did not deliver a beacon of hope for vulnerable people. “Developing countries are expected to slay the climate dragon with invisible swords, having gotten zero assurances on the long-term finance they need,” he added.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling and Matteo Civillini, editing by Joe Lo)

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Source: Theis Kofoed Hjorth

By Sophie Yeo

Avoiding catastrophic climate change is still within reach, but it will require a massive shift to renewable energy, according a UN report on climate change.

The changes are both technically and financially possible, said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today, and would reduce the rate of economic growth by just 0.06% a year.

“It does not cost the world to save the planet,” said Ottmar Edenhofer, who co-chaired the report.

The latest report in the UN’s three-part series deals with how to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The previous two have outlined the underlying science and the impacts of climate change.

5C rise

Despite global efforts to tackle climate change, emissions have continued to rise since 1970, and have accelerated over the past decade.

“Total anthropogenic GHG emissions were the highest in human history from 2000 to 2010,” warns the report, adding that population and economic growth have been key drivers of this increase in emissions.

Edenhofer said that, while the efforts required to combat global warming would come at a cost, it would not mean sacrificing overall economic growth, which is estimated to increase at between 1.6 and 3% per year.

The price tag also did not take into account the co-benefits such as improved air quality, alongside the potential added expense of increased climate impacts.

Without these efforts, the world risks warming by almost 5C by 2100, far exceeding the UN’s agreed target of limiting average global temperature to 2C, a which point the risks of climate change become unmanageable.

“Climate policy is not a free lunch, but it could be a lunch worthwhile to buy,” said Edenhofer.

Policy

While the report steers clear of prescribing policy options, it has clear relevance to those trying to come up with international and domestic solutions to the problem of ever rising emissions.

The report stresses the need for a united global effort in tackling climate change—something that the world hopes to achieve in 2015 in a new UN treaty.

Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the IPCC, said: “What comes out very clearly from this repot is the fact that the high speed mitigation train would need to leave the station very soon, and all of global society would need to get on board.”

Climate change is not a problem that takes place within a vacuum, and decisions taken by policymakers have to balance the problems of global development, and a fair approach to emissions reductions that takes into account controversial issues including each countries’ capacity to deal with climate change and their historical responsibility for the problem.

“Effective mitigation will not be achieved if individual agents advance their own interests independently … The evidence suggests that outcomes seen as equitable can lead to more effective cooperation,” it says in the report.

EU Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said: ”The report is clear: there really is no plan B for climate change. There is only plan A: collective action to reduce emissions now.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry said: “This report makes very clear we face an issue of global willpower, not capacity.”

The post UN: Radical action needed to avert climate catastrophe appeared first on Climate Home News.

Communities in the Congo Basin are heavily impacted by the twin threats of deforestation and climate change.

The Centre for International Forestry Research’s latest project COBAM aims to tackle these problems and create a synergy between climate change mitigation and adaptation through forestry projects in the region.

CIFOR visits one community involved in the project in Lukolela, DRC.

Kate Evans is a filmmaker and writer for the Forests News blog at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

CIFOR is a nonprofit, global facility dedicated to advancing human wellbeing, environmental conservation and equity. Their research and expert analysis helps policy makers and practitioners shape effective policy, improve the management of tropical forests and address the needs and perspectives of people who depend on forests for their livelihoods.

If you want to get involved or comment on forests week you can contact us on ts@rtcc.org or follow the week’s reports on Twitter via #ForestWeek.

You can also leave your views on our Facebook page

Other Forest Week Articles:

The role of forests in combating climate change

Five facts you may have forgotten about forests

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The Defra report calls for more flood and coastal defences such as the Thames Flood Barrier (Source: Flickr/LeonardoEastHastings)

The net effects of climate change in the UK will be negative, however there will be some benefits, according to a new report.

The first UK Climate Change Risk Assessment released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) identifies several benefits such as fewer deaths in winter and the possibility to grow new crops.

However it also identifies a significant increase in the cost of flooding, a rise in water scarcity and indirect damage from climate change effects overseas.

The ten main findings of the report are below:

1. Body of evidence

The latest evidence shows that the UK will have higher average temperatures in summer and winter. There will be more rainfall in the winter and less in the summer.

2. Flooding risk to increase

Increased flood events are the single greatest tangible financial cost of climate change in the UK. The report estimates that the current annual flood damage bill of £1.3 billion will soar. The projected cost for England and Wales alone will reach £2.1-12 billion by the 2080s. These figures only account for property damage.

3. Already vulnerable to extreme weather

The UK has already shown itself to be vulnerable to extreme weather events. The DEFRA reports states that even if you don’t take climate change into account, more action is needed to protect against heavy rains, storms and extreme temperatures.

4. Less winter deaths, more heatwave deaths

Deaths in related to the cold during winter will fall by 3900-24,000 by the 2050s. However, premature deaths in the summer will increase by 580-5900 by the same period.

5. Sensitive ecosystems

Ecosystem health will not fair as well as human health. While some species will benefit, many more will be negatively affected.

Seasonal drought and new diseases will impact forestry and agriculture negatively (Source: Flickr/JoostJBannerIJMuiden)

6. Not a drop to drink

Water resources will be under increasing pressure in the UK, by 2050s, 27-59 million people will live in areas suffering from water scarcity. Water efficiency action will be required.

7. New opportunities for business and agriculture

Again, while new doors open, they won’t outweigh the damage. If successful water management can be implemented there will be opportunities for new crop growth. Businesses will find new markets for products that directly serve mitigation and adaptation.

8. Indirect effects

Larger climate risks internationally will have indirect consequences for the UK such as supply chain interference, global health and political stability

9. Flexibility required

Evidence sufficient to accept identify a range of possible outcomes to inform policies. Policymakers must allow a degree of flexibility

10. More work needed

Significant gaps in evidence still exist. Defra says further work is required to understand the relationships between different climate risks and pressures such as population growth and land-use change.

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