The United Nations climate talks in Germany commenced today, Monday, without an agreed-upon final agenda for technical discussions, dampening optimism that the ten-day meeting will yield a clear program for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai. The Bonn climate conference, aimed at preparing decisions to be adopted at the conference taking place in the UAE, is viewed as a preliminary exploration of the ambitious climate talks (COP28) scheduled for December.
Nabil Mounir, the chair of the UN's Subsidiary Body for Implementation, stated at the start of the discussions, "Despite months of discussions since the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Egypt and proposed agendas from the subsidiary bodies of the COP, no agreement has been reached on an agenda for the Bonn conference."
Tom Evans, a policy advisor at the independent climate research center (E3G), told Reuters: "It's not good at all that the parties are unable to agree on something that seems simple like an agenda for the upcoming sessions."
Evans added that the main contentious issue revolves around whether to include an agenda item proposed by the European Union regarding the phase-out of fossil fuels. He noted that "this kind of stirs up some tensions around a topic that we might see during the 28th Conference of the Parties."
