Owing to the disappointment of Copenhagen, which was supposed to deliver this global agreement, but failed miserably in doing so, the expectations for any breakthrough at the Bonn meetings, or indeed from even the Cancun conference later, are extremely low. Not surprisingly, therefore, unlike the Copenhagen summit, there is little hype and little media coverage surrounding the climate talks in Bonn, which, in fact, hosts the climate talks around this time every year.

And expectedly, there has been little progress so far from the first week of negotiations that had started on June 1.

The main focus of the Bonn meetings this year has been discussions on a new draft text that had been circulated by the chairperson of one of the two working groups that exist under the UN framework of climate negotiations. This working group — called the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action or AWG-LCA — is tasked with the responsibility of finalising the long-term response of the world to the effects of climate change. This AWG-LCA has to decide the actions that need to be taken for a particular desirable outcome by, say, the year 2050 or even later, by 2080 or 2100.

The new draft text has been the result of inputs given by many countries, including India, on how they would like this agreement to be, and also incorporates the provisions of the Copenhagen Accord, a loose and vague document that had come out as the face-saving outcome of the climate change summit in the Danish capital.

The other important thing the Bonn meeting is hoping to produce is some clarity on climate finance. Because the primary responsibility for accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere till now has been that of the rich industrialised countries and because the worst sufferers of the impacts of climate change are going to be poorer countries of Asia and Africa, it is envisaged that the richer nations should pool in money to fund the expenses required by the poor nations to adapt to climate change.

In Copenhagen, the developed countries had promised to provide US$ 30 billion in “new and additional” funding to the worst-affected nations in the three year period 2010-2012. In addition, the United States had also resolved to help in raising about US$ 100 billion every year from 2020 onwards. Despite six months having passed, there is little clarity on how this money is going to be raised and how it would be channeled to the needy. Indeed, even who is going to contribute how much is not clear.

Discussions over climate financing have taken most of the first week of talks here, but with little forward movement. If anything, apprehensions have persisted that the committed money, if it comes, would be diverted from the aid that the industrialised countries provide to the poorer nations and not “new and additional”, as has been promised.