UN climate talks in Germany kick off with no final agenda
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[June 06, 2023]
By Riham Alkousaa
BERLIN (Reuters) - United Nations climate talks in Germany kicked off on
Monday without an agreed final agenda for technical discussions, a
senior negotiator said, clouding optimism that the 10-day meeting would
result in a clear programme for the COP28 conference in Dubai.
The Bonn Climate Change Conference, designed to prepare decisions for
adoption at COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, is seen as a mid-way
check for how ambitious international climate talks will take shape at
COP28 in December.
Despite months of discussions since the previous COP27 in Egypt, there
was no agreement on adopting the agendas proposed by the COP permanent
subsidiary bodies for the Bonn conference, Nabeel Munir, chair of UN
Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI), said at the opening of the
talks.
"What we experienced today ... with the non-adoption of the agenda, it's
not desirable, but it's not uncommon in a party driven process," Simon
Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC), told a news conference on Monday.
Stiell said the December conference could be the most significant one on
climate change since Paris as it provides the world an opportunity to
get on track to meeting the 2015 Paris climate protection commitments.
Making as much progress as possible in Bonn in the coming 10 days is
important as the conference, with 200 countries' representatives, sets
the technical groundwork for the political decisions required in Dubai
later this year, Stiell added.
Tom Evans, a policy adviser at independent climate think tank E3G, said
the main issue was whether to have an agenda item on climate change
mitigation in the Bonn conference, which the European Union had
proposed, posing the question of fossil fuels phaseout.
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![](../images/060623PIX/news_g15.jpg)
People wait in line to attend the
Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, June 6, 2023.
REUTERS/Jana Rodenbusch
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"It's a bit of a warm up to some of the tension around this question
that we could see at COP 28," he added.
At last year's climate summit in Egypt, over 80 countries including
the EU and small island nations agreed to include language in the
final outcome calling for a phase down of all fossil fuels.
Countries including Saudi Arabia and China urged Egypt not to
include that language in the final text.
Asked whether Stiell would push COP28 president designate Sultan al-Jaber
to put fossil fuel phaseout on the Dubai conference agenda, he said,
"I'm not there to tell him anything."
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But he said the secretary's position was clear that halving
emissions by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050 required a deep cut
and phasing out or down of all fossil fuel, Stiell added.
The Bonn conference will witness talks on climate change policy
issues including the so-called global stocktake at COP28, or a
review of countries' collective progress every five years, in the
first such procedure since the Paris Agreement in 2015.
(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa; Editing by Richard Chang)
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