BARCELONA - As Cyclone Biparjoy approached southern Pakistan this week, top Pakistani negotiator Nabeel Munir told governments at mid-year UN climate talks in Bonn it felt like he was “conducting a primary school class”, amid squabbling over the meeting agenda.
“Here in Bonn, negotiators have been playing the blame game and pointing fingers at each other’s insufficient action,” said Mr Tom Evans, policy adviser on climate diplomacy and geopolitics at environmental consultancy E3G. As the Bonn talks wound up, climate policy experts said the unwillingness of wealthy countries to deliver on their climate finance promises and to discuss increased funding for poor and vulnerable nations had soured the atmosphere on most issues under negotiation - and was set to spill over into COP28.
The ripples from the impasse over finance meant that many key issues at the mid-year talks - which were intended to prepare the ground for a successful outcome at COP28 - also remained mired in disagreement and were delayed until further workshops and meetings before the year-end summit in Dubai. “He could be the man to oversee agreement this year on the transition to a phase-out of all fossil fuels,” said Mr Mohamed Adow, director of Nairobi-based climate and energy think-tank Power Shift Africa.
But they lamented that the new measures, to be rolled out in the coming days by the UN climate secretariat, will not include the need to reveal financial sponsorship - meaning it will not be clear whether an individual is being funded by the fossil fuel industry to participate in climate talks.