UN climate change talks in the western German city of Bonn wrapped up on Thursday, with environmental groups drawing mixed conclusions on progress made ahead of COP31 in Turkey later this year.
The June Climate Meetings host negotiating sessions and preparatory meetings for the annual COP summits, the most important annual conference for tackling the crisis.
German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider said the Bonn meetings had shown that the Paris climate agreement remained the common benchmark despite geopolitical tensions.
"Now its implementation must accelerate significantly," Schneider told dpa. He called on more countries to submit ambitious new climate targets ahead of the COP31 summit in Antalya in November.
Schneider said Antalya could become "the summit where political commitments turn into measurable progress."
"The collective experience with the Strait of Hormuz, and how vulnerable most of us are to fossil-fuel price shocks, could make the decisive difference," he said. "Climate action today is also about economic strength, security of supply and competitiveness."
At the same time, environmental organizations gave the conference a mixed assessment.
They welcomed a proposal by the Turkish government, which will preside over COP31, to increase the global share of electricity in final energy consumption from 20% to 35% by 2035.
Laura Schäfer from pressure group Germanwatch praised the initiative as a "positive sign," adding that it was "crucial to underpin this target with concrete national measures – including in Germany."
Oxfam climate expert Jan Kowalzig emphasized that "electrification is, in principle, an important step towards climate neutrality, but only if it is accompanied by a consistent transition to renewable energy."
On the other hand, the organizations agreed that the pace of the conference had been far too slow.
"We have witnessed structural paralysis here in Bonn," warned Greenpeace climate expert Jannes Stoppel. Negotiations were progressing in "baby steps" when "giant strides" were needed, he said.
Fentje Jacobsen of WWF Germany said climate finance had once again remained a major sticking point.
The climate crisis can only be halted if coal, oil and gas take a back seat and renewable energies shape the future, Jacobsen said.
"But here, too, concrete progress is lacking. We can see that in Germany as well. The federal government is currently putting on the brakes instead of pushing ahead with the energy transition at full speed," she said.
Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, struck a somewhat more positive tone.
"In key areas we've taken real strides forward," he said, while acknowledging that "in others, we have seen some side-stepping and stalling. We've seen geopolitical tensions washing through these halls."
He criticized what he described as a tendency for countries to wait for others to act first.
"In some negotiating rooms, we’ve heard a familiar tendency towards you-first-ism: Groups refusing to deliver commitments or allow the process to move forward unless others go first."
Representatives from several countries, including Switzerland, Sierra Leone and Pacific island states particularly affected by rising sea levels, complained at a press conference that facts about the climate crisis were increasingly being challenged during the negotiations.
They argued that the conferences were intended to find solutions to climate change, not to debate the current state of scientific knowledge.
Schneider backed those concerns and also criticized attacks on the scientific foundations of climate research.
"It is encouraging that a large number of countries from both the Global South and the Global North are standing together against this," he said.
More than 6,500 delegates from governments, the scientific community, business and civil society from almost all UN member states have attended the Bonn conference since the beginning of last week.
