The preparatory meetings for COP31, which took place from 8 to 18 June in Bonn, Germany, highlighted existing geopolitical tensions and struggled to deliver concrete results, particularly on the issue of financing adaptation to climate change.
Although the Turkish Presidency of COP31, supported by the Australian co-presidency, proposed a global electrification target of 35% by 2035 (see EUROPE 13885/13), representatives of civil society and the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Simon Stiell, expressed their frustration at the outcome of the discussions.
“We’ve seen geopolitical tensions washing through these halls”, Simon Stiell said in his closing speech. “We’ve heard a familiar tendency towards you-first-ism: Groups refusing to deliver commitments or allow the process to move forward unless others go first. This is a recipe for gridlock when we need all negotiating tracks to be moving in the fast lane”.
Financing under strain. He recalled that the commitments made by the 165 signatories to the UNFCCC were based on science, had to keep global temperature below 1.5°C, and were quantified: $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries, $1.3 trillion in overall financing a year by 2035, and a tripling of adaptation finance.
That last commitment has not been honoured, according to Teresa Anderson, Climate Justice Lead at ActionAid International. “It was only six months ago, at COP30 in Bélem, that the world celebrated a landmark agreement to triple adaptation finance as a historic moment. Now we see rich countries actually wanting us to forget that they ever made that promise”, she said at a press conference bringing together the CAN International network.
“Developing countries are furious and are asking for a clear plan to develop that promise. Instead, we are met with stone rolling and a refusal to even discuss that issue”, she added.
In his opening address in Bonn on 8 June, Simon Stiell had already said that there was “no time to reopen past debates” (see EUROPE 13883/5).
COP31 will take place in Antalya, Türkiye, from 9 to 20 November. (Original version in French by Nadège Delépine)