The annual UN Climate Change Conference in the German city of Bonn began on Monday, designed to lay the groundwork for a successful COP27, due to take place in the Egyptian coastal resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh, in November.
Governments are meeting for the first time since the conclusion of COP26 in Glasgow last November, which saw the operational details of the 2015 Paris Agreement successfully finalized, paving the way for its implementation.
In Bonn, governments will focus on work in the key areas of mitigation, adaptation, support to developing countries – particularly finance – and loss and damage, according to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat, UNFCCC.
Speaking to delegates at the opening of the Bonn sessions, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa said that there needed to be “political-level interventions and decisions in each of these areas in order to achieve a balanced package.
“Doing so will send a clear message to the world that we are headed in the right direction. Because the world is going to have one question in Sharm El-Sheikh: what progress have you made since Glasgow?”
With 197 official Parties, the convention has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement, which aims to keep global average temperature rise this century, to well below 2 degrees Celsius, and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The UN’s top climate change official warned that climate change is progressing exponentially.
With the world currently on track to more than double the 1.5 degree goal of the Paris Agreement by the end of the century, ambition must urgently be raised to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and immediate action and progress in Bonn are needed.