The start of UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, has been delayed as a result of agenda disagreements over finance and trade measures.
The Bonn technical negotiations — halfway-point talks before the UN Cop 30 conference in Brazil — were scheduled to begin on 16 June, but the plenary was suspended as parties failed to agree on an agenda. The opening meeting is due to restart later today.
Bolivia — acting on behalf of the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries (LMDC) negotiating group — proposed two additional items to the provisional agenda. The LMDC group also includes countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Vietnam.
The group's first proposed agenda item seeks to add a line on the implementation of Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement relating to the provision of climate finance to developing countries from developed nations. The EU opposed the agenda item as proposed by the LMDC, and asked for references to Article 9.2 and 9.3, which relate to the provision of finance by "other parties" and sources of finance. The LMDC rejected this counterproposal.
Finance remains a central issue in climate negotiations. At Cop 29 last year, almost 200 countries agreed on a new goal to provide $300bn/yr in climate finance to developing nations by 2035. The Cop 29 finance outcome was significantly lower than the trillions of dollars sought by developing countries, which expressed frustration at the time. But the Cop 29 text also called on "all actors… to enable the scaling up of financing to developing country parties for climate action from all public and private sources to at least $1.3 trillion/yr by 2035". Consultations on a roadmap to achieve that level will take place in Bonn.
The second agenda item proposed by the LMDC relates to "promoting international co-operation and addressing the concerns with climate change related trade-restrictive unilateral measures" — namely the EU's carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).
The CBAM was a point of contention during the Cop 28 and 29 talks, with countries such as China and Brazil raising concerns about its impact on developing countries.
The mechanism aims to create a level playing field by imposing an effective carbon price on imports to the EU in sectors covered by the bloc's emissions trading system (ETS). This is to prevent EU-based firms from moving carbon-intensive production to non-EU jurisdictions with lower carbon costs, and to avoid EU products being replaced by more carbon-intensive imports.
The European Commission expects the CBAM, when fully phased in, to capture more than half of the emissions covered by the bloc's ETS. The scheme's full implementation starts on 1 January 2026, but its impact is already starting to be felt. Six emissions-intensive industries are included under CBAM's scope at present — cement, fertilizers, iron and steel, aluminium, electricity and hydrogen.
