June Climate Talks: mid session overview (interviews)

The first week of the June Bonn climate talks concluded with very mixed results, with some negotiations moving forward positively while others have been completely stalled. The next days will be crucial for a succesful outcome this year as there will be no additional session between the end of the week and the opening of the annual climate conference in Warsaw where decisions have to be made. To summarize the past six days of negotiations and to map expectations in relation to the coming few days, we have asked NGOs experts to give us brief introductions to the state of play of the discussions related to the issue that they are following most closely…

The striking lesson from this first week of negotiations is that the three negotiating tracks progress at very different paces. Mark Lutes (WWF) gives us a brief overview on where the negotiations stand in relation to each of the three tracks currently ongoing in Bonn.

The negotiations around finance will be an important key to the success of the discussions towards a 2015 global deal as the capacity of developed countries to deliver on their engagements has the potential to increase trust between developed and developing countries as well as to enable the latter to scale up their climate policies. Meera Ghani (CAN-Europe)

Adaptation is another important element of the negotiations towards the 2015 agreement, although countries have not yet clarified which role should this issue play in relation to the future package agreement. Sven Harmeling (GermanWatch) also emphasizes the negative impact of the agenda dispute in the SBI track on the negotiations related to “loss and damage“.

Many observers had highlighted the progress of discussions on equity as one of the major outcome of the previous negotiations round. Julie-Anne Richards (CAN-International) confirms that the past week built on this positive dynamics as countries further discussed the role of equity to define obligations under the future agreement.

Finally, Jan Kowalzig (Oxfam-International) emphasizes the upcoming steps for countries to increase ambition on mitigation actions in the short term. Mitigation action is certainly the corner stone of the negotiations under the Durban platform both in relation to both short term actions and post 2020 commitments.