By Celia Chameni
In June 2026, international diplomats gathered in Bonn, Germany, for the UNFCCC’s mid-year climate talks, formally the 64th session of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB64). The two-week conference, running from 8 to 18 June, was intended to lay the groundwork for the COP31 summit in Antalya, Türkiye, this November. It took place under strained conditions: the ongoing El Niño event threatening extreme weather across parts of Asia, Australia, the Americas, and parts of Africa, and continued aid cuts by major donors. The talks largely ended in gridlock, with many delegates expressing frustration. Negotiators covered the full spread of the climate agenda, adaptation finance, emissions-cutting mechanisms, trade, and the Just Transition, but progress on the two issues that matter most to vulnerable countries, adaptation and mitigation, collapsed entirely, while a modest win emerged on the Just Transition and a voluntary electrification target arrived from outside the formal talks altogether. UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell acknowledged that considerable gaps remain, while civil society groups warned of a widening gulf between climate promises and delivery.
The fight over climate adaptation finance
The sharpest discontent in Bonn was over adaptation. At COP30 in Belém last year, countries agreed to triple adaptation finance by 2035, a headline win for developing nations at the time. But the pledge came without an agreed baseline, without clarity on which countries must contribute, and without agreement on what types of finance would count towards it. Some parties and civil society groups argue the 2035 figure should land around USD 120 billion, based on a 2025 baseline tied to the COP26 doubling goal, but even that is contested.
In Bonn, the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), the framework meant to guide adaptation policy globally, was due to progress on two fronts: setting up a technical task force to align newly agreed adaptation indicators with the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience, and folding the tripling pledge into the GGA text itself. Neither survived. The taskforce fight came down to composition: Brazil and the EU wanted it expert-driven, while Grupo Sur, the Like-Minded Developing Countries and the Arab Group wanted it party-driven, and no compromise emerged. The African Group, backed by the Alliance of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries, treated the finance text as a line in the sand; developed nations would not agree to it.
Unable to reach consensus, negotiators invoked Rule 16, a UNFCCC procedural mechanism that defers an agenda item to the next session when parties cannot agree. CAN International’s Pooja Dave was blunt, calling it “clear bad faith and unwillingness by developed countries to make progress on the most important issue on Adaptation,” and adding: “You cannot implement the GGA without finance.” Talks on the GGA will now effectively restart from scratch in Antalya.
The dispute is not only about volume. CARE International’s Marlene Achoki told reporters in Bonn that only around 15 per cent of adaptation finance is currently delivered as grants, with the rest as loans, leaving developing countries exposed to rising debt. That matters because adaptation projects, sea walls, early-warning systems, drought-resistant crops rarely generate revenue, so financing them with debt does not build resilience, it relocates the risk onto the countries least able to absorb it.
Emission-cutting talks end in deadlock
Discussions around the Mitigation Work Programme, the framework focused on urgently reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, also ended completely deadlocked. Countries were deeply divided over the program’s purpose. Some nations wanted the programme to actively push for urgent emission cuts, while others argued it should solely remain a non-binding space to exchange ideas without imposing new targets. Without an agreement, this issue was also pushed to COP31.
Some parties wanted it to actively drive stronger targets, including on specific sectors such as fossil fuels; others, including several major emitters, insisted it remain a non-binding space for exchanging ideas rather than a mechanism that could impose new obligations. As with adaptation, this dispute was pushed to COP31 unresolved.
Tensions over global trade
For the first time, Bonn hosted an official dialogue dedicated to the intersection of climate change and trade, described by observers as pragmatic in tone despite clear underlying tension. It is the first of three such dialogues mandated at COP30, with further sessions due at SB66 in 2027 and SB68 in 2028. The dialogue primarily covered three questions: how trade can support climate action; how climate action can avoid adverse impacts on sustainable development; and how international cooperation can address the ‘trade-climate interface.’ The EU has defended its green trade measures as necessary to decarbonise supply chains and prevent carbon leakage. The EU has defended green trade measures, such as carbon border rules, as necessary to reduce emissions, prevent carbon leakage and support the transition to clean technology. Developing countries held that such measures function as unfair barriers that shift costs onto poorer nations. The tension surfaced elsewhere too: in the adaptation talks, the Arab Group pushed to add language on how unilateral trade measures burden the Least Developed Countries, but the EU and UK rejected it and the reference was dropped. In my view, these debates point to a growing convergence of trade and climate policy, making the two increasingly difficult to negotiate separately, a fault line likely to resurface at COP31.
A bright spot: a just transition for workers
Bonn’s clearest success was on the Just Transition. Parties agreed on the terms of reference for a review of the Just Transition Work Programme, the process through which what civil society groups have dubbed the Belém-Antalya Mechanism (BAM) will take shape. The BAM, agreed in principle at COP30, is intended to help workers and communities navigate the shift away from fossil fuels through retraining, economic diversification and access to finance at the local level. CAN International’s Anabella Rosemberg noted that ‘’the Belém-to-Antalya Mechanism for Just Transition (BAM) is now within reach. Bonn was often slow and frustrating, but it produced the foundations for a meaningful outcome at COP31. The next three months will determine whether governments build a mechanism that supports workers, communities and countries through the transition, or settle for another space for dialogue.’’
What lies ahead in Turkey
The lack of concrete outcomes in Bonn places immense pressure on the upcoming COP31 summit, which will be hosted in Turkey this November with Australia leading the negotiations. Granted, there were some positive announcements outside the formal negotiations, such as the COP31 presidency launching a goal to meet 35% of global energy demand with electricity by 2035, backed by analysis from the IEA and IRENA, cutting building energy use by at least 25 per cent. IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol linked the push to a broader shift he called the ‘Age of Electricity,’ accelerated by the current energy crisis. These are voluntary, presidency-led initiatives rather than negotiated UN decisions, so their impact will depend on how many governments actually sign on. Ultimately, advocates and vulnerable nations are stressing that global leaders must stop arguing over technical procedures and start delivering the critical funding and action required to protect frontline communities.
The outcomes of the 2026 Bonn Climate Talks left me with mixed feelings. Although there was some encouraging progress on the Just Transition Mechanism to support workers and communities, the overall negotiations highlighted how difficult it remains to turn climate commitments into concrete action. Discussions on adaptation finance and stronger emissions reductions made little progress, reinforcing the persistent lack of trust between developed and developing countries. In my view, this raises important questions about the credibility of international climate cooperation and places significant pressure on COP31 in Antalya to deliver meaningful outcomes rather than more procedural discussions. One question has remained with me since following these talks: if wealthier countries are not meeting their own commitments to fund climate adaptation, is it fair to expect developing countries to make ambitious emissions cuts, even at a cost to their economic growth?
