Finance and Carbon Markets at the Bonn Climate Conference
Finance and Carbon Markets at the Bonn Climate Conference
In the first week of June, the 60th session of the Bonn Climate Change Meetings was held; It is a semi-annual global meeting – a special meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Implementation and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice of the United Nations – through which climate action is evaluated, and the achievements of the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, as well as similar agreements, are considered, while preparing for the new climate conference, which is held every year in a different country.
The German city of Bonn was on the verge of a new extremely hot climate match, like many of these types of conferences! Returning to the December 2023 issue of Earth Guards – specifically after the COP28 was held in the Emirates – we find that we asked a very dangerous question, which is: Fossil fuel money, or human life? It seems that the Bonn Climate Conference brought back to our minds the same question: The conference witnessed heated discussions regarding the issues of financing and carbon market trading. Let the old dispute over who pays the climate bill be renewed; Which suggests that the next climate conference will only produce more severe disagreements than before.
Our expectation is not an unnecessary expectation, but rather an objective expectation, based on the history of the Conferences of the Parties, which have witnessed divisions for years and years. Despite the Egyptian movement inCOP27, and after it the Emirati movement in COP28; Implementation remains a difficult challenge on the path to climate action, and regardless of the past, here we are facing another preparatory conference, in which local and international delegates participated and did not emerge from its sessions except with more disagreements and divisions.
Climate bill
Yes, COP28 was a major step towards calling for a new global goal related to climate finance. There, the UAE presidency of the conference was able to launch a climate finance fund worth $30 billion, as well as a global assessment process, which was a historic step. Before him, the Egyptians succeeded in establishing the “Loss and Damage Fund” at the twenty-seventh Climate Conference, which is also a historic precedent in the process of climate conferences of the parties, as the launch of this fund came in response to the calls of developing countries, which are suffering under the burden of climate change, and the cost of combating and adapting to it.
All of this, unfortunately, remains only ink on paper! This is most clearly expressed by the words of Diego Pacheco Balanza, President of the Group of Landlocked Developing Countries, where he described the comments of some developed countries on the issue of climate finance as worrying, pointing out that these countries are trying to evade their duty to provide financing.
This European intransigence and evasion when talking about who should pay the climate change bill was the subject of intense dispute at the Bonn Climate Conference, where its participants were most confused between financing goals that have not been implemented yet, and new financing goals that are expected to be presented at the twenty-ninth climate conference in the Azerbaijani city of Baku.
The last global target was $100 billion, which was expected to be collected by 2020, under the Paris Agreement in 2015; Therefore, we must ask about the fate of this money. Despite this clear failure, the States Parties must issue a new global target at the next climate conference, as we indicated previously.
Whether or not, the participants in the Bonn Climate Conference saw nothing but the intransigence of European countries – led by the United States of America and Japan – which justified their failure to pay climate finance dues to the global economic crisis. This is the crisis that affected most countries of the world after the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Some reports may indicate that the world was able to collect $100 billion – the old financial goal – but international activists and negotiators question the veracity of these reports. Rather, they confirmed that this money was provided by the private sectors in the form of loans and development aid, and is not climate financing to which European countries have committed; So, according to this data, we are still halfway there.
Sixty-three pages
This was not the only crisis facing the Bonn Climate Conference, but there were some technical crises related to the basic form of the negotiations expected at the upcoming climate conference. That is, COP29. The technical experts of the Bonn Climate Conference worked on writing a 63-page text, which was supposed to express all the countries’ interventions and expectations regarding COP29. However, the statement was disappointing, especially the hopes of the United States of America and the European Union countries for a text that would serve their climate policies, which saw how the member states did not take into account Her interventions!
There the text of the statement went through several stages, as it was reduced – with some simplification – to 45 pages, then a third version of it was issued in 35 pages, after which the statement – despite these attempts – was unbalanced, according to the opinions of some countries. This technical problem was not the most present problem at the German conference, but rather there was a sharp disagreement regarding the amount of the new global financing target, which we mentioned previously. In contrast to the 100 billion goal, the new global goal is supposed to be based on criteria and considerations that take developing countries and their needs into account.
Reduction or elimination?
In November 2023, the COP28 negotiations were heated due to the verbal dispute that had remained a specter in the climate conferences since the fifteenth climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009. While the final statement from the twenty-eighth climate conference came out in a language that did not satisfy the suffering of developing countries, and perhaps was somewhat in favor of fossil fuels and their beneficiaries; So this verbal fog becomes the subject of rejection and disapproval at the Bonn Climate Conference.
There – for two weeks – this disagreement remained between the member states, due to which the European countries called for this discussion to be postponed until COP29; Because it is too early to talk about reducing fossil fuels all at once, or gradually.
Despite their initial agreement to export the language of the final statement in the form of a “just transition,” another problem remains unresolved: What is the timetable for this “just” transition, how to achieve it, and what institutions and entities are capable of activating a program like this?
Carbon Markets Trading
Officially, the Azerbaijani Presidency of the 29th Climate Conference announced that the issue of carbon markets is the main issue among the issues that it will invite the world to discuss there. The problem in this case goes back to before COP28, when Article No. (6) of the Paris Agreement stipulates a form of industrial property.
When one of the paragraphs of Article (6) of the Paris Agreement stipulates allowing the trading of carbon credits between the countries that signed the agreement without referring to any international body, then another paragraph explicitly states that carbon credits may be traded under international supervision; Which suggests some contradiction and conflict between the paragraphs of the article, which many considered a complex matter.
This thorny article of the Paris Agreement remained the focus of disagreement among the participants of the Bonn Climate Conference, and this was not only in its sixtieth session, but also in the fifty-ninth session in 2022, prior to the holding of the Egyptian climate conference – COP27.
Just as happened with the issue of climate finance, the conference members referred the problem of trade in carbon markets to the Baku Conference at the end of this year, after many divisions occurred. The result of slow and very complex negotiations.
Thus, the road to COP29 will be fraught with many dangers, and fraught with historical disputes that will continue to extend. Which makes us not see in the near future a glimmer of light regarding reaching a formula suitable for all countries, and putting it into practice.
The issues of climate finance and carbon markets were not the only issues over which a dispute arose at the sixtieth session of the Bonn Climate Conference in Germany. The negotiating table witnessed many other trends, such as the issue of loss and damage, and the issue of adaptation. This recent issue in Bonn was based on four main axes: the global goal for adaptation, the adaptation committee, the Nairobi program of action, and national adaptation plans.
In addition to the above, the disputes at the Bonn Climate Conference included the issue of the global assessment and nationally determined contributions, as well as future expectations regarding the upcoming COP29 conference, which is hosted by a petroleum country like its predecessor, the Emirates, and what is the role of this petroleum country in addressing the existing dispute over the problem of “reduction, or elimination?”, and the extent of its sincerity in shifting its industrial operations towards gas.
All of these issues are extremely important for countries around the world if they want to achieve tangible success in confronting climate challenges. The most important success you must strive for is maintaining the temperature stipulated in the Paris Agreement. However, the obstacle here is how to follow up on these decisions in light of the developed countries’ denial of responsibility for climate problems and obstacles to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Therefore,Earth Guards followed the reality of progress in implementing climate goals, since the twenty-seventh climate conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, until the twenty-eighth climate conference in Dubai, and there she saw that they are two historic conferences in the process of climate action, but many countries are still far from seriousness in dealing with climate issues.
