Bonn climate meet takeaways

A massive and immediate scale-up in climate action is essential to keep alive any realistic chance of meeting the 1.5 degree or 2 degree Celsius targets.

Bonn was expected to act as the springboard for accelerated action.
However, just like the more famous year-ending climate conferences, Bonn underperformed.
Developed and developing countries bickered on issues old and new, and could not even agree on the agenda of one of the meetings till the penultimate day.

The countries did manage to wrap up, however, was the third and final round of technical discussions on global stocktake, or GST.
The 2015 Paris Agreement mandates the Global Stocktake (GST), which aims to assess the progress in the fight against climate change.
The GST helps in deciding ways and means to enhance global action to bridge the adequacy gap.
The Paris Agreement says GST must be conducted every 5 years, starting in 2023.
The actual meat in GST would come in at COP28, the year-ending climate conference, held in Dubai.
The technical discussions have just outlined a short ‘framework’ that includes the elements to be included in the Stocktake exercise.

A bulk of the accumulated greenhouse gas emissions, the reason for global warming, have come from a group of about 40 rich and industrialised countries.
The 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, refers to such countries as Annex I countries.
This historical responsibility has been the basis for the differentiated burden-sharing on developed and developing countries in the climate change framework.

Australia issued a statement which downplayed the historical responsibility of the developed countries in causing global warming.
Australia argued that the historical emissions happened at a time when there was no alternative to fossil fuel based energy sources.
It argued the emissions happened when there was little understanding on the harm caused by greenhouse gases.
It pointed out that since 1992, about 57% of the carbon dioxide emissions had come from non-Annex I countries.
It said that 70% of the incremental warming since 1992 due to emissions from carbon dioxide, methane and sulphur dioxide had come from non-Annex I countries.
Australia stated that developed countries would take the lead in climate action. However, Australia held the belief that there was no unambiguous debt owed by the developed countries for past actions.

The stand of Australia was similar to the one taken by the US at the start of the Bonn meeting.
US said bridging the adequacy gap was not the sole responsibility of the developed nations and that it would not agree to references to pre-2020 commitments in the GST.
Erasure of historical responsibility is the most sensitive red line for developing countries.

Apart from GST, another mechanism was set up at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 for climate action.
MWP– The Mitigation Work Programme (MWP) is a temporary emergency exercise that focuses solely on increasing emission cuts.
IPCC – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says global emissions have to come down by 43% from 2019 levels by 2030 to keep alive hopes of meeting the 1.5 degree target.
Monetary aid – Most developing countries, including India, have said they would be able to act more if international support in the form of money and technology transfer was made available.
Tech transfer – Developed countries are under an obligation to support the implementation of climate action plans of developing countries through money and tech transfers.
However, there has been a perennial short supply of money, and more funds are needed for all kinds of other purposes, with the total estimated to be running in several trillions of dollars every year.

A fresh effort is underway in Paris to raise financial resources for climate change.
The Summit for a New Global Financial Pact is an attempt at redirecting global financial flows and raising new money to fight climate change.
The Pact will also help in dealing with associated problems like biodiversity loss and poverty.