This past summer, I observed a preparatory meeting in Bonn, Germany ahead of the COP29 climate summit in November. Nicknamed the “climate finance COP,” the talks in Baku, Azerbaijan will focus on creating a New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance. This core provision of the 2015 Paris Agreement is intended to finance growing climate needs of developing countries. After reaching a compromise target of $100 billion until 2025, nations are now required to meet a new negotiated goal at COP29.
Simon Stiell, the United Nations climate chief warned more progress is needed before November. “We’ve left ourselves with a very steep mountain to climb to achieve ambitious outcomes in Baku,” Stiell cautioned.
On another equally important topic, carbon markets, a key part of global financing and one of personal interest to me, officials achieved a consensus in smaller discussion. Carbon markets are trading systems that allow private companies to buy and sell carbon credits to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For the carbon market to work efficiently, the trade of the credit must be tracked.
Under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, each country would have the ability to host a registry and report the amount of carbon traded to the UN every five years. For countries lacking the technical expertise and capacity to set up a market, Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement provides for a centralized mechanism that the UN will supervise itself.
The Paris Agreement set a goal of holding warming at, ideally, 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, and if not, a maximum of 2 degrees C. To reach the goal, carbon markets are one way for countries to work together to prevent the worst levels of warming. It helps facilitate investment across borders, fitting into the larger aim to achieve consensus on an overall finance goal in Baku.
Finalizing rules of the carbon market produced many thorny issues in Bonn. Debates led to negotiation, standoffs, and successes. There was one main issue: if a company was to purchase land and preserve it, preventing any development or destruction of it, would the firm receive a credit despite failing to achieve a net-reduction emissions? This is known as “avoidance activities.”
On this issue, and others, countries went back and forth—for hours each day across two weeks—to attempt to reach consensus. Negotiations at the UN climate conferences require all parties to agree before an outcome can be adopted. That allows a single country to hold up negotiations. With no end in sight, on the very last day, the facilitators of the negotiation employed a last-ditch tactic: an “informal informal.”
Negotiations are already informal since subgroups negotiate on specific topics, and then all come together at the end. In an “informal informal,” the facilitators give the floor completely to negotiators, allowing them to work collaboratively. Oftentimes, they form a circle in the middle of the room and go paragraph by paragraph to sort out their differences.
Ultimately, they agreed on many issues that were preventing consensus. As for avoidance activities, they, ironically, reached consensus to attempt to negotiate again in 2028 to find a consensus on the issue.
Successes in building consensus in Bonn can serve as models for moving communities forward on climate change. It’s our responsibility to discuss global warming with those around us. To achieve better results under the UN, the U.S. Congress, and at local levels, we need to work collaboratively across ideology to address climate change.
The same is true for other political dilemmas we face, whether it is the Middle East conflict or political polarization in America. We should hear other sides with the goal not to find agreement but to understand each other. We should build trust to have tough conversations and peaceful dialogues with people in our communities. Following the lead of consensus-building at the Bonn conference, we can learn the power of communication to embrace our differences and move America and other nations toward climate solutions.
