THE war on Ukraine reared its head this week in Bonn, Germany, where representatives of the world’s nations met for the latest round of international climate talks.
The meeting is a staging post on the way to the 28th Conference of the Parties summit, COP28, at the end of November. This will be held in the United Arab Emirates, a country that is one of the world’s biggest oil-producers.
During the opening session of negotiations on Monday, several countries and regional blocs, including the United States, the European Union, Australia, and the UK, made statements condemning the Russian invasion and its attacks on civilian targets, and expressing solidarity with Ukraine.
The lead negotiator for Russia then requested the right to interject, which any country can do during the open plenary discussion. He described Ukraine as a “puppet of the West” and defended the Russian invasion. When he began to talk about Ukrainian “neo-Nazis”, about 100 negotiators stood up and walked out of the hall. The walkout was repeated three times, as Russia interjected to oppose other statements of support for Ukraine, after which the discussion moved on to other topics.
This is not the first time that geopolitical tensions have threatened to disrupt climate diplomacy and indicated the fragility of co-ordinating global action. Last year, China broke off climate negotiations with the US temporarily after the visit of the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan.
The focus of the Bonn talks can be broken down into two sections: stopping climate change from worsening, and helping those who are already suffering from its effects. There is a significant focus on fossil fuels at these talks, after last year’s COP27 summit in Egypt, when about 80 countries had pressed unsuccessfully for an agreement, in principle, to phase out of all fossil fuels. There is now growing pressure for this language to be agreed at COP28.
Campaigners are calling for a trebling of renewable investment alongside the phasing-out of fossil fuels. The climate-justice lead at Christian Aid, Mariana Paoli, said: “When you want to get out of a hole, the first thing you need to do is stop digging. We’re in a climate-change hole, and that’s why we need countries to commit to a phase-out of all fossil fuels at COP28.”
Two years ago, in Glasgow, at COP26, rich countries committed themselves to doubling their spending on “adaptation”: funds to help climate vulnerable people to adapt to the changing climate. Last year, in Egypt, they agreed to establish a Loss and Damage Fund to compensate people who had suffered permanent climate-induced losses and damages (News, 25 November 2022). The UN’s website reported last November: “Representatives from 24 countries will work together over the next year to decide what form the fund should take, which countries should contribute, and where and how the money should be distributed.”
Julius Mbatia, the global-climate-justice manager at the ACT Alliance, a coalition of Christian charities that campaign on climate change and other development issues, said: “It is vulnerable people who are suffering the worst impacts from a climate crisis they have not caused. In fact, they’ve been telling the rest of the world to cut their emissions and stop making it worse for many years. This is a matter of injustice, and getting funds flowing to those that urgently need it must start happening immediately.”
The talks in Bonn run for two weeks, and are being attended by a range of church leaders and Christian charities, who are encouraging nations to take swifter action. One of them is Mattias Soderberg, the global climate lead at the Danish charity DanChurchAid: “As people of faith, we stand side by side with our brothers and sisters who are affected by climate change. With God as our inspiration, we should make sure nobody is left behind. We face a climate crisis, and we can only solve it if we are united and take action together.”
Joe Ware is a senior climate journalist for Christian Aid.