EU wants mitigation work programme on Bonn talks agenda

The EU — with significant support from developing countries — yesterday proposed that the UNFCCC Bonn climate talks agenda officially reflects the mitigation work programme, an EU official said today.

The EU proposal was supported by the alliance of small island states, least developed countries and the independent alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean, but was blocked by the Arab Group of countries, the like-minded developing countries — a bloc of low- and middle-income countries — and Brazil, South Africa, China, and India.

This has left the talks in Bonn, Germany, without an adopted agenda so far.

The EU's proposed agenda item in essence pushed to accelerate mitigation action — which an EU-led group of 80 countries argued hard for up until the final hours of the UN Cop 27 climate summit in November 2022 in Egypt. The mitigation work programme was discussed on 3-5 June before the Bonn climate conference, under the first global dialogue on the issue. "The commencement of the global dialogue and investment-focused event under the mitigation work programme presents a new opportunity to build momentum and a global cooperation to enhance pre-2030 ambitions and implementation in this critical decade," Australia said during the plenary yesterday.

The programme was established at Cop 26 in Glasgow, in 2021, to "urgently scale up mitigation ambition and implementation". Its mandate was set to include at least two annual global dialogues and "investment-focused events" to unlock finance and scale up implementation of action on mitigation. The topic decided for 2023 is that of accelerating the just energy transition.

Australia added yesterday that it looked forward to engage with parties to reflect on the dialogue under the Bonn provisional agenda item, after the EU's proposal was rejected. Although there was an agreement to move forward with discussions, a representative for China said that decisions made during any talks on items that have not been agreed would carry no legal weight.

The "high stakes issue is that if we don't see an agenda formally agreed here in Bonn, the conversations that do happen on these topics basically can't make it into Cop 28 in a formal way", campaign group Destination Zero's Catherine Abreu said today.

Another agenda addition, put forward by the G77 group of countries plus China, proposed an item on national adaptation plans, "in particular emphasising the need for provision of finance in order to deliver those plans and the doubling of adaptation finance", Abreu said. But although it asked questions, the EU did not block this, an official said.

"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.

Climate finance, including discussions over the establishment of a loss and damage fund, agreed on at Cop 27, will be a key theme at both the Bonn talks and at Cop 28.

The Bonn talks began yesterday and run until 15 June. They mark the midpoint for Cop 28, set to take place in December in Dubai, and set the groundwork for the summit.

By Georgia Gratton and Dafydd ab Iago