Blame game kick-starts in Bonn

There’s been hardly any movement at the Bonn climate talks in the last 24 hours even as the meeting draws to a close.

If anything, it is that the blame game has kicked-in in earnest with both the EU and United States ploughing into China, accusing the Asian country in particular of ‘hardening’ its stance on how not to launch talks under the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform (AWG-ADP).

But it is not only China that maintains that the issue of pre-2020 mitigation be completed under the two existing mandates (AWG-LCA and AWG-KP) which are already working on the issue, a large number of developing countries from all regions of the global south (which make up about four billion of the world’s population are united in their call on Annex I countries to honour their legally binding international obligations under the climate change convention and protocol.

Annex I Parties’ mischaracterization of these developing countries as ‘blockers' is not only misleading but is also hollow and scandalous.

**A plenary is scheduled for later tonight in search of a breakthrough after a series of meetings on Wednesday collapsed. Throughout today, May 24, Sandea De Wet, interim Chair of the ADP from South Africa, has been in closed informal sessions with some parties. 

There’s even the possibility that parties would be forced to a vote on the issue. If that happens, it will be the first since the UN climate change process began two decades ago.