This article is an opinion piece whose contents represent the standpoint of its author and not UPF Lund or The Perspective’s editorial board.
Every year, much attention is brought to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP), the annual UN summit dedicated to negotiations over how to best combat climate change at the global level.
Lesser-known is the summit that precedes this recurring COP. This June marked the 64th sessions of the Subsidiary Bodies of the UNFCCC (SB64), which take place in Bonn, Germany, every summer. Falling halfway between COP30 in Belém, Brazil, and COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, the ambition for the sessions was both to make progress on previous promises and to commit to new ones. Global action on the climate is thought to have entered an “implementation phase” where the focus at SB64 would be on translating ideas into practice.
However, while the months between SB64 in June and COP31 in November have left room for progress, the mood in Bonn quickly turned from excitement into frustration as certain objectives were achieved and others entered into states of political gridlock. At the heart of these tensions was climate finance, which poses a major obstacle to implementation and constitutes a major divide between developed and developing countries.
Attendance was also unusually low at the conference. As one attendee with previous experience at the sessions in Bonn told me, last year one almost had to squeeze through the hallways to cut through the crowds and arrive at the next event on one’s self-curated agenda. This year, the venue was decidedly more roomy. Visa barriers, costs for travel, and national governments de-prioritizing the climate in the face of growing global security concerns are all reasons that have been pointed to by attending organizations.
This is a concerning development. Engagement with climate issues appears to be diminishing around the world, and not because the matter can be considered ‘solved.’ In fact, climate change—its consequences and its solutions—sit at a natural intersection point of virtually every other policy category. As the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has demonstrated, a shift away from fossil fuels not only reduces pollution, but also increases states’ resilience to geopolitical shocks.
Speakers at one side event raised concerns about the fact that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has resulted in prices spiking not just for oil but also for other important products such as fertilizer, both of which impose a particular strain on smallholder farmers in the Global South. The at-the-time anxiously anticipated and now chart-breaking “super El Niño” was a frequently invoked concern at SB64 for its expected aggravating effects. The developing polycrisis at the intersection of the Strait of Hormuz closure, increasingly intense weather patterns, and global economic turbulence poses a threat to global food supply. In countries where the agricultural sector accounts for a significant share of employment and many operate as subsistence farmers, this crisis threatens people’s basic livelihoods.
At SB64, progress was achieved in some areas, such as a just transition mechanism, but stalled in other key areas, such as the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). Central themes during discussions of the GGA included the desire by many developing countries to elaborate on the Belém COP30 commitment to triple adaptation finance. Disagreements soon erupted concerning how to structure the task force, with developing countries generally favoring an expert-driven approach and developed countries preferring a politically oriented, country-led process. In the end, no final decisions were reached on the GGA. There are, essentially, disagreements on how commitments should be interpreted and approached. This makes it impossible to operationalize those goals and to make meaningful progress on their implementation, not least due to the lack of available climate funding for countries seeking to translate goals into practice.
So what is in store for COP31? Taking place over two weeks in mid-November, the summit is co-hosted by Türkiye and Australia, with pre-COP meetings and events taking place in Fiji and Tuvalu in the lead-up. Both Fiji and Small Island Developing States, which are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, in particular the intensification of hurricanes, rising sea levels, and damage to natural sea and ocean resources. These states take particular initiative in climate change conversations, and their statements during SB64 served as a reminder of the urgency of action on climate. The vision for Antalya is still about implementation, but it remains to be seen whether states will be able to deliver.
By Sabina Rameke
November 3, 2026
