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.
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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.
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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”.
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“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.