PACJA to attend the Bonn Sessions 2025:  Recollection  of the Previous SBs

It has become routine that before the annual UNFCCC conference known as COP, the subsidiary bodies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meet to prepare decisions adopted at the annual COPs and CMA.

This year the sixty-second sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SB 62) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will take place at the World Conference Center Bonn (WCCB) in Bonn, Germany, from 16 to 26 June 2025.

The Bonn sessions coincide with the 10^th anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement, and it is an opportunity to reaffirm multilateralism and international cooperation in addressing global issues, as stated in the informal note released by the SBSTA Chair (Adonia Ayebare) and the SBI Chair (Julia Gardiner).

In the past, the Bonn Sessions and the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance emphasised the urgent need for climate action, particularly for Global South countries facing the impacts of climate change.

During SB56, PACJA reminded negotiators of the urgent need to address the loss and damage agenda, which was not demonstrating positive progress on establishing this fund mechanism.

Two years later, despite some progress regarding the establishment of the Loss and damage mechanism, some of the other key climate Action agendas were not indicating signals of improvement as parties were nearing the 1^st Global Stocktake.  At SB58, PACJA reminded that it’s paramount to pursue an overhaul of the climate finance architecture, ensuring the Global goal on adaptation receives the attention it deserves. Work towards scaling up funding for needs-based funding for adaptation; polluters to increase their mitigation ambition, and the need to avoid delaying tactics in SB58.

Despite the clarion call addressed to negotiators at the onset of negotiations, little or nothing was achieved by SB58, as negotiators from developed countries lack the compass necessary to move the conversations to the next level. The negotiators were ill-equipped to deal with commitment elements on the means of implementation, making SBs all about dialogues.

At the end of the SB58, PACJA reiterated agendas with urgent consideration, including GGA, which was referred to COP28 and urged that it is important for parties to remember that National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) are vehicles for delivering on adaptation action in vulnerable countries and they must be given the attention and urgency they deserve.

During these sessions, alarming concerns were raised about giving prominence to business-type models such as insurance as a response mechanism for loss and damage, which are inappropriate for Africa; therefore, PACJA suggested that such mechanisms should be delivered under the UNFCCC framework. Read the full PACJA statement about the outcome of SB58 here.

2024 was a year of setting a New Collective quantified Goal on Climate Finance, though it fell short of the goal requested by the African group of negotiators, PACJA, has raised this issue during the SB60 in June 2024.  PACJA had cautioned that in case NCQG is not addressed as a pivotal agenda of negotiations during SBB60 and COP29, then negotiations would bear no tangible fruits.

PACJA urged that NCQG must take into account critical adaptation and Loss& damage needs of the vulnerable communities in Africa and other developing nations. It must encompass financial projections for undertaking actions in the spheres of adaptation, loss and damage, mitigation and just transition in supporting developing countries to transition to low low-carbon development pathway. Click here to read the opening statement and the exit statement outlining the demands and recommendations for SB60 as released by the African Climate Justice Alliance.

SB 62 is approaching: what should we expect?

PACJA will participate in the 62nd Sessions of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB62) in Bonn. During this period, PACJA will hold two side events and two press conferences, scheduled for June 17 and June 24. SB62 takes place seven months after the new finance goal was adopted at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

A few months ahead 30^th COP, the Bonn Sessions are expected to bear hopeful fruits that will feed into COP30 conversations in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025.

When addressing participants at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin, Germany, on 25 March 2025, Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change, said that “COP30 will need to respond to the new national climate plans submitted this year – and chart a course for the next decade to get us on track to meeting our commitments and targets under the Paris Agreement”.  He added that “with a new global finance goal now in place, 2025 is about moving from pledges to real investments. It’s also about working out how we mobilise 1.3 trillion dollars annually under the Baku to Belém Roadmap”.