UN climate talks in Germany kick off with no final agenda

Countries including Saudi Arabia and China urged Egypt not to include that language in the final text. The Bonn conference will witness various discussions on critical climate change policy issues including the so-called global stocktake at COP28, where countries will review their collective progress every five years, in the first since the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015.

UN climate talks in Germany kicked off on Monday without an agreed final agenda for its technical discussions, a senior negotiator said, clouding optimism that the 10-day meeting would result in a clear programme for the COP28 conference in Dubai.

The Bonn Climate Change Conference, designed to prepare decisions for adoption at COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, is seen as a mid-way check for how ambitious international climate talks will take shape at COP28 in December. But despite months of discussions since the previous COP27 in Egypt, there was no agreement on adopting the agendas proposed by the COP permanent subsidiary bodies for the Bonn conference, Nabeel Munir, the Chair of UN Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI), said at the opening of the talks.

"It's never great when the parties can't agree on something seemingly as simple as the agenda of the at the sessions ahead," Tom Evans, a policy adviser at independent climate think tank E3G, told Reuters. The main issue of contention was whether to have an agenda item on climate change mitigation in the Bonn conference, an item that the European Union had proposed which would have proposed the question of fossil fuels phaseout, Evans said.

"It's a bit of a warm up to some of the tension around this question that we could see at COP 28," he added. At last year's climate summit in Egypt, over 80 countries including the EU and small island nations agreed to include language in the final outcome calling for a phase down of all fossil fuels. Countries including Saudi Arabia and China urged Egypt not to include that language in the final text.

The Bonn conference will witness various discussions on critical climate change policy issues including the so-called global stocktake at COP28, where countries will review their collective progress every five years, in the first since the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015. A global goal on adaptation, just transition towards sustainable societies and preparing decisions on the new loss and damage fund, agreed at COP 27, are among the topics on Bonn's conference agenda.

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