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August 10, 2026
For 10 days in June, negotiators from nearly 200 countries filled the halls of the World Conference Center in Bonn, Germany, for the 64th Bonn Climate Change Conference (SB64). Representatives were in Bonn to draft the text that will govern how the world funds climate adaptation, cuts emissions, and manages the transition away from fossil fuels. The Bonn annual technical meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC's) subsidiary bodies (the Subsidiary Body for Implementation and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice) occurs every summer between the annual UN climate summits (known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP). The negotiations and texts that come out of Bonn have historically been highly influential in the discussions held at COP later in the year. COP31 will be held in Antalya, Turkey, from November 9 to November 20, 2026. The U.S. federal government, which was not present at the Bonn Conference, is not expected to send a delegation to Turkey as it withdrew from the UNFCCC in January 2025.
This year’s session ran from June 8 to June 18 and drew 9,206 registered participants, including 4,198 party delegates. Negotiators adopted their agenda quickly on day one, raising early hopes for a productive session. Discussions over the 10 days revolved around the Global Goal on Adaptation, the Adaptation Fund, the Mitigation Work Programme (MWP), and Article 6-regulated carbon markets. What follows is a summary of what the negotiators did and did not get done.
The Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), established under the Paris Agreement, aims to strengthen countries’ ability to adapt to climate change impacts and build resilience. After days of contentious negotiations, stakeholders left Bonn with much of the conversation around the GGA unfinished. This gridlock was attributed in part to discussions around adaptation finance. Least-Developed Countries negotiators had originally pushed for tripling adaptation finance to $120 billion per year by 2030, from the $40 billion adaptation finance goal set at COP26 in Glasgow. The final COP30 text pushed that timeline back to 2035 without specifying a dollar figure at all. The question of an exact figure came up in Bonn but got buried under the adaptation finance talks, leaving it for COP31 to sort out from scratch. Developing countries and civil society groups are now pushing for the $120 billion target again, though closing the full adaptation finance gap would require more than $300 billion per year.
Established at COP7 in Marrakech in 2001, the Adaptation Fund finances concrete adaptation projects in developing countries. The Fund was set up under the Kyoto Protocol, but countries have agreed it should eventually serve the Paris Agreement exclusively—a shift that would let it access 5% of the revenue generated by the Paris Agreement’s new carbon market. Negotiators had hoped to resolve the transition in Bonn so it could be formally adopted early at COP31 in November, but disagreement in Bonn left the matter unresolved.
Disputes over the Adaptation Fund at Bonn came down to the terminology used to classify countries as either “developed” or “developing.” This crucial classification determines the countries that are legally obligated to contribute to the Fund.
Some countries favor reclassifying countries that have historically been labeled “developing” but are now wealthier—like China and Saudi Arabia—as “developed,” triggering a binding obligation for them to contribute adaptation and mitigation funds to developing countries under the Paris Agreement’s Article 9.1. The countries that would transition from "developing" to "developed," incurring new obligations, prefer the classification from the 1992 creation of the UNFCCC, which sorts countries into “Annex I” (wealthy countries, as of 1992) and “non-Annex I” (all the others). This classification would leave countries like China and Saudi Arabia exempt from contributing to the Adaptation Fund, since it does not account for economic growth since 1992.
Both "developed" (Annex I) and "developing" (non-Annex I) countries each have two reserved seats on the Adaptation Fund’s 16-seat governing board, which decides which adaptation projects receive funding. The remaining 12 seats go to UN regional groups, small island states, and the least developed countries.
On the final day of the Bonn conference, no agreement could be reached on the classification of countries and on board membership despite a Heads of Delegation meeting convened specifically to resolve the issues. The only item negotiators did settle was procedural, about how and when to conduct the Fund’s next scheduled review, but even that is contingent on resolving the disagreement over "developed" and "developing" terminology. Everything else was pushed to COP31 in November, on the basis of draft text that the facilitator stressed explicitly “does not represent agreement among Parties.”
The cost of the stalled Adaptation Fund falls hardest on the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change. The Pacific Island Countries (PICs) face some of the world's most severe sea-level rise: Tuvalu’s sea level has risen 8.3 inches—nearly twice the global average over the past 30 years—and an estimated 50,000 Pacific islanders face displacement each year from climate impacts, often forced to leave ancestral villages and burial sites behind. The PICs would need $3.3 billion annually in global climate finance to meet their adaptation needs, ranging from elevating infrastructure to planned relocation, and their actual received cash flows in 2023 totaled $963.7 million. At Bonn, the Alliance of Small Island States criticized the slow progress on adaptation finance, saying procedural obstacles had blocked meaningful advances ahead of COP31. The stalemate leaves small island nations questioning whether the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (an international commitment to financially assist developing countries in meeting their Paris Agreement climate goals) is “dead on arrival.”
The Mitigation Work Programme (MWP) was established at COP26 to help countries accelerate emission mitigation efforts towards achieving the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F). Negotiators in Bonn were expected to assess the MWP’s effectiveness and agree on whether and how to continue it before the program's mandate was set to lapse.
Negotiators did not agree on a final draft text for the MWP to send to COP31—the parties could not even agree to forward a document capturing their progress as a basis for continued talks at COP31. Also at issue was the Paris Agreement’s temperature target itself. Carbon Brief reported that representatives from a broad group of countries, including the island states, least developed countries, certain African and Latin American nations, and the European Union, denounced attempts by large "developing" countries, namely Saudi Arabia and India, to remove language about the 1.5°C Paris goal and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from conference agreements.
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement governs how countries buy and sell emission credits, which are tradeable permits that allow a country to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases on the condition that an equivalent reduction is being achieved elsewhere.
At Bonn, negotiators confronted a funding gap threatening the infrastructure that oversees the entire Article 6 credit trading system: the UN body running Article 6.2’s technical review and capacity-building faces an $8–9 million budget shortfall through 2027. Countries clashed over how to close it—the European Union pushed for the system to fund itself through fees, while others wanted it covered by the United Nations' regular budget—leaving the question unresolved by the end of the conference.
The United States will be affected by carbon market implementation, even though it has dropped out of the Paris Agreement and international climate negotiations under the Trump Administration. For instance, the European Union, concerned that its internal carbon market is making its companies less competitive, has launched a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to charge fees on imports from countries with weaker climate rules, including the United States. Congress has an opportunity to weigh in on how the United States addresses its emissions as more governments consider similar border measures that may affect the competitiveness of U.S. goods.
Despite gridlock across other agenda items, the Bonn conference took a concrete step toward a working model for climate finance. Negotiators advanced a working text of the Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) for a just transition to a low-carbon economy, formally placing climate finance on the COP31 agenda. BAM is meant to offer countries technical support, help them draft just-transition plans, connect them to finance and technology, and track implementation gaps. Its mandate, governance structure, funding links, and eligibility criteria are still unresolved, but COP31 could make BAM an officially functioning climate finance mechanism. BAM’s design choices—who governs it, how it is funded, and who qualifies for funds—will shape how international climate finance flows to coal-dependent communities, and Congress could benefit from tracking that governance process closely, since it will help set precedents for how U.S. allies approach the energy transition.
The BAM is proof that consensus was still possible in Bonn on at least one track, even as the others stalled. Whether the initial BAM text evolves into a functioning mechanism or meets the same gridlock that stalled the GGA and Adaptation Fund depends on further talks during COP31 in Antalya this November.
COP31 also unveiled a “35 by 35” electrification target as one of the summit’s headline targets, aiming for electricity—as opposed to direct fossil-fuel combustion—to meet 35% of the world’s energy demand by 2035 (up from about 20% currently). For now, it sits in the non-binding Action Agenda rather than as a formal negotiating item, meaning COP31 will determine whether it becomes a concrete goal or stays aspirational.
Heading into COP31, there will be several indicators to watch for progress. Negotiators will need to resolve the Global Goal on Adaptation’s 59 adaptation indicators and settle the Adaptation Fund’s board-seat dispute, while also working out governance details for the BAM. Additionally, negotiators will be deciding whether the “35 by 35” target secures formal placement on the COP31 decision agenda, and whether the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism will be formally recognized as a UNFCCC agenda item given that it could be viewed as “disguised restriction on international trade” that is prohibited under the Convention's Article 3.5. How these disputes resolve will set the tone for further progress at this year’s COP31 summit.
Author: Jasmyn Mirsepahi
Advancing science-based solutions for a sustainable, resilient, and equitable world
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