The work of negotiators tying agreements with global climate targets is in full swing – or from astern to avoid any metaphorical emission. From 6 to 16 June, the meeting leading up to COP27 was held in Bonn, Germany, which will be held in November this year in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. After seven years of intense discussions on the aftermath of the Paris Agreement, created in 2015 during COP21, the spirit of the meeting in Germany has signaled that there is something different in the air.

From the Paris Agreement to COP26, held last year in Glasgow, Scotland, the main question was how to close the so-called treaty rulebook, which set the target for maintaining the average warming of the planet at 1.5°C, without exceeding 2°C.  as the implementation of the regulated carbon credits market, the goal of recent years – to close the rulebook – has been achieved in Glasgow.

For climate policy expert at the Climate Observatory, Stela Herschmann, who was in Bonn, concluding the details of the Paris Agreement required intensive textwork, with the famous brackets and brackets that signal points that need to be negotiated. "This year, the feeling is a certain beginning. The meetings had many conversations and there was not so much objective text that negotiators could deal with," he said.

Even amid doubts, there is a certainty: COP27 needs to end with a decision on plans to move forward in climate mitigation. In Egypt, the Mitigation Work Program is expected to be launched. As the targets presented by countries for reducing emissions are still insufficient to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement, the idea is that this work programme will come up with alternative solutions to get there. The goal is to try to increase climate ambition within the current decade, but the meeting in Bonn has not made clear what exactly this work program will be.

At the same time, traditional disagreements between representatives of developed and developing countries have not yet been overcome. With the end of the cycle of discussions on the Paris Agreement, the questions lead to a crossroads without a way out: what to do now? How to implement goals? Where will the money come from? At the tip of developed countries, there is a question about increasing ambition. For the poorest nations, there has been an open debt that generates mistrust: the promise made in 2009 by developed countries at COP15 in Copenhagen of creating a $100 billion-a-year fund for adaptation and climate mitigation. It didn't happen. In 2015, in Paris, the promise was reiterated with the deadline extended until 2025.

With the Egyptian presidency at COP27, the issues closest to developing countries, which will be the main ones affected by climate change, are expected to be put on the agenda. "It will be inevitable to emphasize the issue of loss and damage. The topic marked COP26, was strong in Bonn and there was an alignment of developing countries for the topic to enter the agenda," herschmann said.

For Cintya Feitosa, international relations advisor at the Climate and Society Institute (iCS), one of the reasons for the climate of tension was the difference between how to deal with the demands related to mitigation and the demands for adaptation and losses and damages, a more specific issue of the poorest countries. "Mitigation has a clear goal in the Paris Agreement, which is to keep the temperature below 1.5ºC. But what is the goal for adaptation? The feeling that remains is that they are conversations without practical application, such as the creation of a new fund, for example," he said.

The distinction between the two terms is subtle, but it makes all the difference in the practical application of decisions on how to deal with the climate crisis. Mitigation refers to efforts to reduce or prevent new greenhouse gas emissions – within the example posed by Feitosa, the global effort to reduce emissions can keep the planet's temperature rise at 1.5°C, which will reduce the negative impacts of climate change for all nations.

In turn, adaptation and losses and damage will be noticeable in the directly affected regions. Investing in adaptation means preparing for the current and future effects of global warming, such as droughts, landslides and more intense floods, for example. Consequently, regions affected by these inevitable events will have to deal literally with the losses and damage caused by climate change.

In the evaluation of wwf-brazil's Global Climate and Energy Policy Manager, Fernanda Carvalho, the next COP will not be a conference of impactful results, but of advances in the processes of issues that have been defined in Glasgow, such as the theme of mitigation and a global goal for adaptation.

"The next COP could connect with real-world issues more effectively, especially in the context of the war in Ukraine," he said. The conflict on the European continent has opened up energy and food security crises, which have led to decisions that prolong the survival of fossil fuels rather than the use of large-scale renewables, at least in the short term. "COP needs to provide answers to broader questions. The hope is that the meeting will continue to advance in the process," Carvalho said.

Source: Um só Planeta