“Poison that’s killing us all”: Bonn climate talks try to prevent failure at gas-fired COP

“For thirty years, the UNFCCC has failed to address the cause of climate change, the combustion and production of fossil fuels.”

Those were the opening remarks of Catherine Abreu, executive director of Destination Zero, at a sombre Climate Action Network (CAN) press briefing from the Bonn climate talks (SB58), the preliminary agenda-setting talks supposed to set the scene for COP28 in the UAE later this year.

“We still fail to rid ourselves of the poison that’s killing us all,” was how Meriem Madi, communications and partnerships official at CAN Arab World, put it.

Abreu’s comments, echoed by every other panellist at the briefing led by a panel of experts from climate-related NGOs, neatly encapsulate the feeling at Bonn: that COP28 to be held in the UAE later this year will fail unless it pushes much harder for the phaseout of the fossil fuel sector.

Recent findings suggest temperatures are likely to breach the threshold of 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial levels at some time within the next five years.

The Bonn talks are the space where representatives from 200 countries come to hash out their differences and detail the measures that will be included in the next COP talks in December. If items are not formalised in the final agenda at Bonn, they can’t be formally taken to COP.

That’s why news that no final agenda could be agreed upon in the early days of the talks was concerning, but unsurprising.

“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.

Agreements on the agenda stalled over several items. There was an EU-proposed item on mitigation, supported by many developing countries, which tabled the question of fossil fuel phaseout.

A China and G77-proposed item on national adaptation plans, which emphasised the need for the provision of finance to developing countries to deliver on those plans, was also a source of contention. That item proposed the doubling of existing finance flowing from developed to developing countries to help them adapt to climate change.

Other contentious issues included the loss and damage fund, agreed upon at COP27 in Egypt last year, which would pool finances from developed countries to support developing countries in managing climate-related damages, and the global stocktake, a proposed assessment of how far off track governments are in meeting their Paris pledges.

Aside from the need for a more aggressive stanch on fossil fuel reductions, a major issue at Bonn is whether developed and developing countries could agree on a fair and equitable flow of resources to help poorer countries, often those least at fault for the climate crisis, to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

“I think it’s important to note that even in this agenda fight, we are seeing this struggle between the need to increase ambition and the need to make sure that there’s adequate finance in order to deliver that ambition,” Abreu said.

Mitigation: fossil fuel expanders in the firing line

Squarely in the crosshairs of the experts present was the world’s failure to appropriately push for a quick end to the fossil fuel era.

“It’s clear that the success of COP28 will be judged by whether we get a clear set of decisions that spell the end of the fossil fuel era,” said Romain Ioualalen, global policy campaign manager at Oil Change International.

While major moves in renewables uptake – including the news that for every dollar spent on fossil fuels last year, $1.7 was spent on renewables – are cause for optimism, Ioualalen was clear that a renewable energy revolution would be toothless without actual emissions reductions.

“The fossil fuel industry continues to promote and expand oil and gas production around the world, despite all the scientific assessments from the IEA, from the IPCCC, from many, many others showing that the expansion of fossil fuel production is incompatible with the objectives of the Paris Agreement,” Ioualalen said.

“The main culprit for this is the US, obviously, the largest expander of oil and gas production,” Ioualalen said.

“But the elephant in the room here is the UAE, which is going to be the third largest expander of oil and gas production in the world in terms of the CO2 emissions that come out of these fields in the next couple of years.”

The UAE is this years’ COP host, and the COP28 president-designate, Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, was UAE’s Special Envoy for Climate Change between 2010 and 2016 and 2020 to the present.

He is also the founding CEO and chairman of Masdar, UAE government-owned renewable energy company, as well as the head of the UAE’s national oil company, Adnoc – a position critics have said makes him a questionable COP president.

“We need to have a conversation on that, and on whether the UAE presidency will leave aside the interests of the oil and gas industry in these negotiations and engage in good faith on the topic of a renewable energy revolution and the phase out of fossil fuels,” said Ioualalen.

At the opening session of the Bonn talks, Stiell urged countries present to put the common good ahead of national interests.

“There is at times tension between national interest and the global common good,” he said during the opening session at Bonn. “I urge delegates to be brave, to see that by prioritising the common good, you also serve your national interests – and act accordingly.”

The experts present said previous COP talks had failed to include strong enough reference to actually ending the era of fossil fuel extraction and expansion, resulting in weak outcomes.

What’s more, many of the expert present said too much of the UNFCCC’s work to date was empty target setting, with little measurable outcomes in implementation.

“In order to wrestle this process into something that can help countries with implementation, rather than just ongoing target setting for goals that all too often get missed, we need to be seeing a full suite of outcomes out of the various technical discussions at COP28,” said Abreu.

Finance flows from the rich to the poor high on agenda

The G77 and China-backed request for an agenda item on adaptation included a heavy focus on the need for appropriate financing so developing countries can deliver their adaptation plans.

In fact, financing has been a significant source of tension at Bonn (and at previous COP meetings).

At COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries committed to delivering US$100 billion per year by 2020 for climate action in developing countries.

But at the Bonn briefing Nafkote Dabi, climate change policy lead at Oxfam International, said that goal had patently not been met.

“Developed countries have reported that they’ve delivered $83.3 billion in 2020,” Dabi said, according to the OECD’s biennial report. “But our analysis shows that actually, what they have delivered is just a third of that, between $21 to 24.5 billion is what we estimate was delivered.”

Perhaps more alarming, Dabi said, was the fact that much of that finance (about 70%) was being delivered in the form of non-concessional loans rather than grants, effectively roping developing countries into cycles of debt.

Part of developed countries’ financial commitment to supporting developing nations to mitigate and adapt to climate change is the Loss and Damage Fund, agreed upon at the last COP meeting, which would funnel support to developing countries worst hit by climate-related disasters.

Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at CAN International, said the humanitarian sector could not shoulder the burden, and COP28 needed to involve a serious attempt to kickstart the fund.

“We can’t allow accountability to be shifted outside the system,” he said. “This system is responsible, this system is accountable.

“For us, the Loss and Damage fund has to be the top level mechanism that should have an oversight on whether people are getting sufficient support or not.”

Singh said richer countries continued to frustrate these efforts by promoting unfit solutions, including insurance and loans.

“There are so many examples, including the recent one from California, that insurance is not working, places that were insurable are becoming uninsurable.”

As for loans, Singh called them, “deeply unfair”.

“It’s double jeopardy for people who are facing these crises and grappling with these impacts through no fault of theirs, and then you’re asking them to take a loan for recovery? No, that’s not acceptable.”