Saturday, May 12, 2018

Bonn Climate Talks Make Gradual Progress

Despite the “missing in action” US, delegates say the Bonn climate talks just ended made progress – but too little and too slowly.



Arctic sea ice melt rate shows climate change urgency. (Image Credit: Pink floyd88 a, via Wikimedia Commons) Click to Enlarge.
The Bonn climate talks, a crucial round of UN negotiations on pumping up the muscle of the global treaty on tackling climate change, the Paris Agreement, has ended in Germany.

Participants heading for home know they have a daunting workload ahead, with too few solid outcomes achieved in the last 10 days.  But despite the absence of the US government, described by some as “missing in action” after Donald Trump’s repudiation of the Paris treaty, many still hope that Bonn has proved a useful prelude to the next climate summit.

This dogged optimism apart, the organizers, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), alarmed at Bonn’s lack of progress, are arranging an unusual extra week of talks in Bangkok in September to help the world leaders who will meet in Katowice in Poland in December to agree how to prevent the world from dangerously overheating.

One key sticking point so far is the failure of developed countries to produce the previously promised US$100 billion a year by 2020 to allow poor and vulnerable countries to adapt to climate change.  In some cases the survival of small island states depends on that help.

The purpose of this year’s round of UN climate talks is to finalize and implement the Paris Agreement, concluded in 2015, which aims to prevent global temperatures from increasing by more than 2°C over their pre-industrial levels, and if possible keep them below 1.5°C.


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