A week into the Bonn Summit (June 16-26) — the mid-year UN convening on climate change — there is emerging a troubling image of global climate diplomacy, which is already under immense pressure owing to regional stand-offs, dwindling unity among nations amid trade wars, and geopolitical tensions.

Multilateral climate action is at a crossroads. Negotiations on contentious issues like transitioning away from fossil fuels, obligation of developed nations to provide climate finance to emerging economies, the pathway to measuring adaptation, and engineering systematic reforms have been put on the back burner, indicating the lack of interest of large developed nations, which are also the historical polluters.

As a new world order is getting shaped, the urgency of climate change is not reflected in the global diplomacy conversations even while climate impacts continue to mount.

Though finance remains the core priority, and the global trade negotiations have spotlighted the topic as central to climate talks, the sessions in Bonn are proceeding without these issues in the main agenda, and only to be included in other work plans. Wounds from the negotiations at COP29 in Baku are still raw, and will certainly bring more bruises and disappointment over the exclusion of the most crucial items if the world is serious about scaling up the speed and scope of climate action.

Fissures over roadmap

Amid bitter exchanges between country parties, not only India, but UN climate chief Simon Stiell also voiced his concerns on the nature of negotiations, saying “the past 30 hours have been hard and have not reflected the urgency that we face”; Bolivia’s Diego Pacheco, on behalf of the like-minded developing countries (LMDCs), termed as “unacceptable” the developed countries’ attempt to “shift their financial responsibilities to the private sector”.

If the rocky start to the Bonn talks, nicknamed SB62, is anything to go by, fingers remain crossed over the final outcome on this year’s other crucial agenda items, which include key discussions on the Global Goal on Adaptation indicators under the UAE–Belém Work Programme, the UAE Dialogue on implementing global stocktake outcomes, the UAE Just Transition Work Programme, and the Baku-to-Belém roadmap.

A consultation with the parties on the Baku-to-Belém roadmap — a joint initiative by the COP29 (29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and COP30 presidencies to scale up climate finance to at least $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 — has already brought forth fissures among the parties.

COP29 president, Mukhtar Babayev, has made it clear that the scale of finance remains “insufficient”, noting that $300 billion was what was agreed “at minimum”. The presidency of COP30 (taking place in Belém, Brazil, this year) maintained that the roadmap is not a negotiated outcome but a process guided by decisions from CMA 6 (sixth session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement), and to be finalised at CMA 7 — the formal sessions under the Paris Agreement focused on the implementation of key elements like the nationally determined contributions (NDCs), the global stocktake, and climate finance, among others.

The consultation reaffirmed three core principles — the roadmap must be solutions-oriented; it should engage a wide array of stakeholders; and country ownership, under which finance flows, must align with national priorities and respect the contexts of developing countries.

Call for inclusivity

India delivered a strategic intervention on behalf of the LMDCs, aligning with G77 and the Arab Group, reiterating that the roadmap process is a joint presidency-led exercise — and not a negotiation — and must ensure clarity, transparency, and inclusiveness in both process and substance.

It had also made this clear earlier in its submission to the UNFCCC on the expectations from the Baku-to-Belém roadmap,.

It has made it clear that the roadmap must reflect the perspectives as well as concerns of developing country parties and adhere to the principles of equity, common but differentiated responsibilities, respective capabilities (CBDR-RC) and national circumstances.

Daggers seem to be drawn on another contentious issue — the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) implementation through the Paris Agreement’s Article 2.1(c), with the LMDC bloc warning against imposing conditionalities through finance. The SB62 also has an uphill task in finding a solution to advancing the operationalisation of the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) to enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change. The challenge, however, remains in creating a set of indicators that are specific enough to be meaningful, yet flexible enough to reflect local realities.

As energy markets get roiled due to military strikes across West Asia, and the global economy is negatively impacted due to multiple events, can climate action sustain through all this?

(The writer is Founder and Director, Climate Trends)

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Published on June 22, 2025