Bonn climate talks close ahead of COP28 with no significant progress

Climate talks intended to prepare for this year's COP28 United Nations climate conference in Dubai have yielded little progress, with governments still reluctant to embrace more ambitious steps to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit).

The head of the United Nations' climate body said on Friday that he was not satisfied with the outcome of the 10-day conference, and the process was moving too slowly given the urgency of the climate crisis.

"Never satisfied. In terms of whether reasonable progress was made. Yes. Was it enough? We will know as we enter the COP28 itself," Simon Stiell, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary, said.

The climate body said talks closed on Thursday with progress on the issues of financing measures to mitigate climate crisis; the question of liability for the loss and damage it has caused; and funding for measures to adapt to its effects.

The UNFCCC did not specify what had been decided at the conference, but said delegates in Bonn had laid the groundwork for more ambitious action.

"From what I have seen and heard, there are bridges that can be built to realise the common ground we know exists," Stiell had said late on Thursday.

Climate finance still an obstacle

The UNFCCC said climate finance was among the topics heavily discussed in Bonn.

Critics accused the US, Britain and the European Union of trying to divert discussions away from their legal accountability for climate change.

They said rich industrialised countries are pushing developing countries to commit to measures such as expanding renewable sources of power without taking into account their inability to pay for them.

Environmentalists did, however, welcome new UNFCCC requirements for participants in the UN process to disclose their affiliation, a step aimed at curbing the influence of fossil fuel industry lobbyists.

Phasing out fossil fuel

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday that countries must start phasing out oil, coal and gas - not just emissions - and demanded that fossil fuel companies "cease and desist" measures that aim to hobble progress on the issue.

Some Western governments and climate-afflicted island nations agree, but the oil-producing United Arab Emirates, host of COP28, says the talks should focus on phasing out emissions.

Nevertheless, the UAE's incoming COP28 president said last week the phasedown of the fuels themselves was inevitable.

The landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement set a 1.5C increase in the global surface temperature as a limit for averting the most catastrophic effects of global warming in the industrial era - a threshold already close to being crossed.