Bonn Climate Talks

Turning up the heat on climate negotiations

Bonn 3: Chairman raises stakes 0
Posted 3 months, 1 week ago
I spend 2 weeks a year in Bonn - but I've never been here in August until this year. Bonn 3 was supposed to be a quiet session, but chairman Michael Zammit Cutajar just raised the stakes.
Dispatch from Bonn: Oxfam America

Negotiations are all well and good, but where’s the bling bling? 0
Posted 5 months ago
With less than six months to go before Copenhagen, the global climate negotiations are at a pivotal moment. After a two-week negotiating session in Bonn, the negotiations are turning the corner.
Letter from Europe

Raining on the climate parade 2
Posted 5 months ago
At the just-concluded Bonn climate talks, Japan and other rich nations didn't come to the table with offers of steep emissions reductions, throwing into doubt this year's crucial international climate negotiations.
The blame game gets ready for prime time

Bonn was disappointing, and Copenhagen will be too. Who to blame? 2
Posted 5 months, 1 week ago
The latest round of climate talks was a big disappointment, and Copenhagen will almost certainly be another. If it is, who will get blamed?
To reach a climate agreement in the near future, countries must look into the past 4
Posted 5 months, 1 week ago
The second round of this year's climate negotiations have wrapped up in Bonn, Germany, and the chances of signing any global climate deal in Copenhagen this December look increasingly slim. Two major hurdles remain: the lack of political will by industrialized countries to commit to deep emissions cuts, and resistance to help poorer countries deal with climate change. What's beginning to change with this round of talks is how developing countries and climate justice movements frame these issues.
Dispatch from Bonn: Population Action International

Population: Off the radar, not off the map 3
Posted 5 months, 1 week ago
"The main driving forces of future greenhouse gas trajectories will continue to be demographic change, social and economic development, and the rate and direction of technological change," according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. Two of these drivers - development and technology - have been the focus of a great deal of discussion among the international community as they continue to work toward a new international climate change agreement in Bonn this week. The third, demographic change, has been conspicuously absent.
Dispatch from Bonn: Rainforest Action Network

The case for carbon speed limits 2
Posted 5 months, 1 week ago
With the conclusion of this round of talks, negotiators have succeeded in creating a legal draft text that will be refined at the next round of talks in Bonn in August – now up to 200 pages from the original 50 created in Poznan - but we still are missing the critical fuel that we will need to continue the process all the way to Copenhagen: the political will to actually achieve emissions reductions, particularly on the part of the United States.
Dispatch from Bonn: The Nature Conservancy

Adaptation: Something old, something new, now some money is also due 0
Posted 5 months, 1 week ago
Dispatch from Bonn: Rainforest Action Network

Short term memory won’t cut it 0
Posted 5 months, 1 week ago
Developed countries from Japan to the E.U. are failing to really seriously invest in the task at hand: reducing emissions. Instead, they seem to be trying their best to do as little as possible while getting the most possible credit for their actions. And that’s not even counting the U.S.
The doors are open

Transparency at the Bonn climate negotiations 1
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago
You might think that the international global warming negotiations are occurring in some backroom, filled with smoke, and outside the view of the world. That is after all, what some opponents to global warming solutions would have you believe. But that is the farthest thing from the truth.
Agriculture: A necessary complication in the climate negotiations 2
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago
Despite a sense that the international climate change negotiations, convened in Bonn, Germany this week, are grinding forward at a painfully slow pace, there is a momentum to the process that makes adding new ideas very difficult. While we know that agriculture can make a vital contribution to addressing climate change, it lags behind the forest discussion and effectively including it in the Copenhagen deal at this late date will be no easy thing.
Hinting (in the State Controlled News) from China

Coming global warming limits in China? 0
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago
News coming out of China provides hints that the country might adopt a domestic limit to reduce their global-warming pollution.
Day 17 in the Sprint to Copenhagen

That status of global warming negotiations in Germany 0
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago
The first week of negotiations slowly worked its way through the things that need to be addressed. The pace will need to pick up the rest of the week and, most importantly, the rest of the year if we are to secure a strong agreement in Copenhagen. There's a clock that sits on the front screen of every session that is the “Countdown to Copenhagen,” reminding delegates how little time is left.
Dispatch from Bonn: 350.org

On working with the UNFCCC and making aerial climate art 0
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago
Witness 500 people, in the rain, voluntarily dressing up like marshmallows, and lying in the wet grass for forty minutes. It's really quite amazing what we'll do to be a part of something beautiful. The message is urgency – the clock is tck tck tcking, and it's time for a bold and fair climate deal.
Letter from Europe

At Bonn climate talks, it’s a dialogue of the deaf 4
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago
The negotiations underway in Bonn this week, which are supposed to result in a radical new climate agreement in Copenhagen in just six months' time, risk becoming a dialogue of the deaf.
Dispatch from Bonn: Rainforest Action Network

The good, the bad, and the ugly at Bonn 0
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago
I started thinking about the good, the bad and the ugly so far in the Bonn climate change negotiations around forests. Over dinner with some fabulous forest experts, we arrived at the following list.
The ties that bind

Some heated exchanges from Bonn on “binding commitments” for Copenhagen 0
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago
In the climate negotiations occurring in Bonn, Germany there is an emerging debate on the form of "commitment or action" developing countries will undertake. This has been a long-running debate in the international global warming negotiations, but it has gained more focus as the negotiating text has included proposals where all countries undertake binding international actions.
Dispatch from Bonn: Population Action International

Powerful injustice at the Bonn climate talks 3
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago
Over the past few days at the Bonn climate negotiations, the issue of inequity has come up in many different contexts. Today, I am thinking about the ways that inequity rears its head in mundane but powerful ways.
A walk through the week's climate news

The Climate Post: Waxman-Markey, Bonn, and carbon counting 6
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago
The U.S. Congress fast-tracks climate legislation, international negotiators hash through the first “negotiating text” for year-end global talks in Germany, and big businesses start counting their carbon. The pile of climate stories this week climbed faster than predicted New England sea levels.
Dispatch from Bonn: The Nature Conservancy

What does nature have to do with climate change? 1
Posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago
It's sometimes easy for nature to get lost during the international climate change negotiations here in Bonn. But what does nature have to do with climate change and how does nature play into these negotiations? A group of some of the world's top scientific experts released findings in Bonn this week to help give negotiators those answers.