Climate Change Experts Meet in Bonn, Prepares The Roadmap For COP29 Experts from around the world are preparing for COP29 at a ten-day conference in Germany. One central topic is how to fund climate action.
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Photo: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) chief Simon Stiell
Bonn, (Germany) –Around 6,000 experts from nearly every country are convening in Bonn for the annual conference of the UNFCCC secretariat. Over the ten-day meeting, delegates will lay the groundwork for the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP29), set to take place in November in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The UN Bonn Climate Change Conference kicked off on Monday with a stark warning from UN climate chief Simon Stiell: the world is on track for 2.7°C warming, making the goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C increasingly challenging.
In his opening address, Stiell emphasized the crucial role of international cooperation, warning that without it, global temperatures could rise by up to 5°C.
Held from June 3 to 13, the Bonn conference marks the halfway point to COP29. COP29 president-designate Mukhtar Babayev highlighted the conference as a pivotal moment, stating, “Our future depends on coming together to devise fair and ambitious solutions to cut greenhouse gas emissions and build resilience. Over the next two weeks, we must make progress on a new climate finance goal, Article 6, and other key negotiation topics. These efforts will lay the foundation for tangible results at COP29. In Bonn, we will outline the pathways to achieve our goals and empower everyone to protect themselves and our planet.”
A central issue at the conference is funding for climate action. Since 2009, industrialized countries have committed to providing significant financial support to poorer nations, a target reaffirmed in the 2015 Paris Agreement and extended to 2025. The pressing question now is what will happen after 2025.
The Bonn meeting aims to set the agenda for this year’s climate negotiations and initiate discussions on a new finance goal to replace the current $100 billion per year target.
“We cannot stress enough the need for predictable, adequate, and accessible climate finance,” said Evans Njewa, head of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group, at a news conference on the first day of the conference. He emphasized the urgency of agreeing on a new core of climate finance to match the scale of needs in the LDC group.
Njewa highlighted the daily adverse impacts of climate change on the 45 LDC countries, many of which are in Africa. He cited Malawi’s devastating encounter with tropical cyclone Freddy last year, which resulted in significant loss of life, infrastructure damage, displacement, and missing persons.
The international community agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. At COP28 in Dubai last year, nations committed to expanding renewable energy to achieve this target. The focus now is on concrete steps to meet these goals. The next UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) will be held from November 11 to 22, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The November meeting in Baku will challenge governments to demonstrate their commitment to combating climate change, following a significant year of elections in the European Union, the US, Britain, India, and South Africa.
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– Dr. Shahid Siddiqui; Follow via X @shahidsiddiqui
