Bonn SB64 Climate Talks End With Climate Finance Dominating Article 9 Work Programme Disputes

The first week of the Bonn climate talks, known as the SB64, ended with climate finance dominating discussions across negotiating tracks and with most key climate finance discussions concluded.

“A new climate plan presented on Wednesday, March 25, 2026, aims to put Germany back on the right climate trajectory”

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In Bonn, the new Climate Finance Work Programme on Article 9 opened amid procedural disagreements over its place on the COP31 agenda, and the Group of 77 and China said it was deeply disappointed the work programme was not included in the draft agenda for Paris Agreement negotiations, or CMA8, scheduled to take place alongside COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye.

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The Climate Finance Work Programme was established as part of the Mutirão decision in the “political package” released at 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) to the UNFCCC in Belém, Brazil, and parties held three sessions including a party-only dialogue and a multi-stakeholder dialogue.

Talks on Article 2.1(c) and the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap to $1.3 trillion also continued in Bonn, with the Roadmap emerging from COP29 in Baku where developed countries committed to providing $300 billion a year to developing countries and an “aspirational target” of at least $1.3 trillion annually by 2035.

Climate Home News reported that while talks on climate finance itself “rumble on without a clear direction in Bonn,” finance had emerged as “the central topic of debate in all of the other negotiating rooms and main events.”

Rebecca Thissen, global advocacy lead at Climate Action Network International, told a press conference on Monday that “There is no progress happening in the finance rooms, and this is sending really worrying signals for COP31,” and added that it was “toxifying every single discussion in other negotiating tracks.”

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In the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) discussions, the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) requested that future text include the COP30 commitment to triple adaptation finance, and Climate Home News said the 2035 goal agreed in Belem lacked details such as a baseline for calculating the increase in annual funding.

Developing countries and civil society representatives, Climate Home News said, already have a figure for the goal in mind—$120 billion a year—derived from a tripling of the earlier goal of $40 billion a year by 2025, and they want a firm target in any decision adopted on the Global Goal on Adaptation.

Climate Home News said the baseline issue had risen up the agenda in Bonn because the 2035 goal agreed in Belem lacked details for implementation, including that it “doesn’t have a baseline against which to calculate the increase in annual funding.”

Marlene Achoki, global policy lead at CARE International, said at the briefing that even $120 billion a year “is actually the floor - it’s the starting point to keep things going, it's not enough for the 300 billion gap,” referring to the gap between annual adaptation finance and needs of developing countries as estimated by the UN.

The same report stated that adaptation finance was $31.7 billion in 2024 and was likely to have fallen in 2025, and it described how the difference in baseline could equate to at least $30 billion a year in 2035.

It also noted that a new text presented to governments on Monday didn’t explicitly include the tripling goal but only indirectly mentioned the COP30 decision in one of two options, with consultations ongoing on Monday afternoon and expected to continue on Tuesday morning.