PINA

United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell has warned countries against reopening previously agreed climate commitments and delaying action, as the UN June Climate Meetings concluded with major differences still unresolved ahead of COP31.

In his closing statement to delegates at the end of the two-week negotiations, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said progress had been made in several areas but acknowledged that critical gaps remain, particularly on adaptation and mitigation.

“Sometimes history is progressed in moments. Through heavy choices, big decisions or pure chance. And sometimes it is made in rooms like these. Gradually, carefully, out of the spotlight,” he said.

Stiell said the meetings demonstrated the slow but essential work of multilateral climate negotiations.

“We have seen that process in action over these ten days. Yes, there remain significant divides, and significant work for the intersessional period ahead. But we have seen a seriousness in tackling key issues, and a determination to find solutions,” he said.

The UN climate chief said negotiators had made meaningful advances in several key areas, particularly on the just transition agenda.

“In key areas we’ve taken real strides forward – showing climate cooperation at work, and this process doing its job.

On just transition, you took important steps towards turning the promise of the just transition mechanism into a reality, and to set up the review of the just transition work programme,” Stiell said.

He noted that while the outcomes may appear modest within the context of the UN climate process, they carry broader significance for communities and workers worldwide.

“While these might feel like modest steps for our process, they are big strides in the right directions for communities and working people everywhere.”

Stiell also highlighted progress under Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE), which focuses on public participation, education, and engagement in climate action.

“On Action for Climate Empowerment, we laid crucial groundwork for accelerating a just transition, and deepening participation and engagement across societies,” he said.

He said negotiators also achieved substantive progress across several other thematic areas, but expressed disappointment over the lack of stronger outcomes on adaptation and mitigation.

“There were also substantive steps taken across other crucial thematic areas.

On adaptation and mitigation, Parties voiced the need to deepen and accelerate action, but very disappointingly, we did not deliver on that here in Bonn,” Stiell said.

The remarks come as governments face mounting pressure to accelerate implementation of commitments agreed under the Paris Agreement and previous UN climate conferences.

Stiell welcomed announcements made by the COP31 Presidency, which is being jointly hosted by Australia and Türkiye.

“And we’ve heard the COP31 Presidency announce targets for electrification, city resilience and efficiency, and waste under the Action Agenda.”

He stressed that both formal negotiations and the COP31 Action Agenda would be critical to achieving progress.

“Minister Kurum, Minister Bowen and I are in lock-step: the negotiations and the Action Agenda are both vital, separate but parallel and complimentary tracks. COP31 must deliver real strides forward in both,” he said.

Despite areas of progress, Stiell warned that geopolitical tensions had increasingly influenced negotiations.

“In some areas, we have seen some side-stepping and stalling. We’ve seen geopolitical tensions washing through these halls.”

He reiterated that countries must honour commitments already agreed under the UN climate framework and the Paris Agreement.

“As I said when these meetings began, we must all deliver on existing obligations and plans under the Convention and Paris Agreement. And we simply cannot afford to re-open previous decisions, to renegotiate existing targets, or to backslide,” Stiell said.

The UNFCCC chief delivered one of his strongest warnings against attempts to weaken or selectively interpret existing agreements.

“Let me now go further, and say:All Parties must be comfortable and confident in restating our existing global commitments – without cherry-picking those that suit tactically in the moment.”

He highlighted specifically to commitments made during the first Global Stocktake and key financial and adaptation targets already agreed by governments.

“Commitments made in the first global stocktake; commitments that respond to the science and the 1.5 degrees limit; on Loss and Damage; on 300 billion; on 1.3 trillion; on tripling adaptation finance; and more.
These are the baselines,” he said.

Stiell also criticised what he described as a recurring tendency among negotiating groups to condition their own actions on commitments from others.

“But in some negotiating rooms, we’ve heard a familiar tendency towards you-first-ism: Groups refusing to deliver commitments or allow the process to move forward unless others go first.

This is a recipe for gridlock when we need all negotiating tracks to be moving in the fast lane,” he stressed.

He said countries must move beyond political deadlock if they are to make progress ahead of upcoming international meetings and future climate negotiations.

“So that we make real progress towards implementation in Antalya and Addis Ababa. And arrive at the second global stocktake at COP33 much closer to delivering on the pledges made at the first.” said Stiell.

Stiell said leadership from upcoming COP hosts and partner countries would be critical.

“The leadership of Türkiye and Australia will be vital. So will the ongoing support of Azerbaijan, Brazil and Ethiopia.”

He also highlighted the importance of upcoming pre-COP meetings in the Pacific.

“Pre-COP in Fiji and Tuvalu is a key moment on the road to Antalya.”

However, he cautioned against delaying efforts to bridge differences until those meetings take place.

“But we cannot wait until then to step up efforts to find common ground on the tough issues.” he said.

The Executive Secretary called on governments to elevate discussions to ministerial level in the coming months.

“So I urge you to bring in your Ministers as soon as possible, in the weeks and months ahead. Particularly on the thorniest issues,.” he said.

Stiell also addressed efforts to improve the efficiency of the UN climate process, saying the secretariat is examining ways to strengthen the system while preserving its party-driven nature.

“The secretariat has been listening carefully and taking steps to find efficiencies, so we can keep delivering on all our growing mandates.”

He revealed that an independent group of experts had been tasked with exploring possible reforms.

“I also asked a group of experts to consider ways that our process could be optimised or evolve – recognising all that it has achieved, and its Party-owned nature and foundations. This week, they shared some of their independent ideas. A summary will be made available in the weeks ahead.”

The UNFCCC Secretariat will now seek further input from governments and stakeholders.

“The secretariat is very much in listening mode, and very clear on our mandates.

We particularly want to hear from you – the Parties – and other stakeholders, and we’ll provide information soon on a process and timelines to do that,” he said

Looking ahead to COP31 and future negotiations, he urged countries to maintain momentum despite exhaustion following the intensive negotiations.

“We must press forward,” he said.

Stiell also warned against viewing climate diplomacy as a contest between winners and losers.

“I know many folks will take a breath after these ten longs days and watch some World Cup football.

But let’s please not get the idea of winners and losers in our heads. To protect 8 billion people from this climate crisis, it’s cooperation not fierce competition that we need,” he said.

The Bonn talks are widely viewed as a critical stepping stone toward COP31, where governments will face increasing pressure to demonstrate that commitments made under the Paris Agreement are being translated into action amid rising climate impacts and growing global uncertainty.

The outcomes of the June Climate Meetings in Bonn, Germany (SB64) is marked by delay, division and a dangerous weakening of ambition at a time when climate impacts are accelerating across the Pacific.

Across the major negotiating tracks, Parties failed to reach meaningful agreement, pushing critical decisions on mitigation, adaptation, finance and just transition to COP31 in Türkiye.

For Pacific communities already living with the consequences of the climate crisis, the outcome is more delay when the world can least afford it.

SB64 also exposed growing fault lines across the negotiations, including attempts to weaken the role of science in climate decision-making, continued resistance to delivering climate finance at the scale required, and a widening gap between political rhetoric and climate reality.

As the road to COP31 begins, PICAN warns that trust is declining while the workload grows.

The burden now falls to COP31 to deliver where SB64 could not. The world cannot arrive at another climate conference with the same unresolved questions and expect different results.

Responding to the conclusion of SB64, Dr Sindra Sharma, International Policy Lead at PICAN said: “SB64 will be remembered as a negotiation that deferred rather than decided. For Pacific people, every delay means more lives disrupted, more communities at risk and a narrowing pathway to 1.5°C.

“What concerns us most is not only the lack of outcomes, but the growing willingness to sideline science, soften accountability and postpone responsibility. Negotiating the science of climate change won’t delay the truth of the crisis upon us.

“The Pacific came to Bonn defending science because science is our floor of consequence. Without it, ambition becomes optional and justice becomes negotiable. We reject both.

“As we head towards COP31, we must stop managing the politics of climate change and start addressing the reality of it. The Pacific is demanding action that matches the scale of the crisis in full recognition that the window to deliver is narrowing. Fast,” she said.

Pacific Island nations have delivered a sharp rebuke to countries seeking to weaken climate ambition at the UN climate negotiations in Bonn, warning that efforts to sideline science threaten the future of the world’s most vulnerable communities.

Speaking on behalf of the 14-member Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) group at the Defend the Science press conference on Wednesday, Fiji’s Permanent Secretary for Environment and Climate Change, Dr Sivendra Michael, condemned attempts to remove references to climate science and the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature limit from negotiation texts.

“Let me be absolutely clear, anyone that is blocking references to science, they are not our friends,” Dr Michael said.

The statement came amid growing concerns from Pacific negotiators that scientific evidence underpinning global climate action is increasingly coming under attack during discussions at the Bonn Climate Change Conference (SB64).

Dr Michael described scientists as the Pacific’s “closest allies” and said the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) remained central to the fight for climate justice.

“Scientists are our closest allies. The IPCC is the backbone of our climate diplomacy regime,” he said.

“There is no equity for the most vulnerable if we fail to protect the science and stay within the 1.5-degree temperature limit.”

He warned that some negotiators were attempting to create a false choice between science and equity, a narrative that Pacific nations firmly reject.

“There are attempts to argue that science gets in the way of equitable solutions,” he said. “Science and equity go hand in hand.”

For Pacific Island countries already grappling with rising seas, coastal erosion, stronger storms and increasingly unpredictable weather, science provides critical evidence of the risks they face and the actions needed to avoid catastrophic impacts.

“Science has shown us the suffering that will come if we do not keep fighting for the 1.5 degree,” Dr Michael said.

“Science has revealed that our ocean’s pulse is failing as we approach one of the world’s greatest climatic tipping points. Science has confirmed that we need trillions in dollars more to adapt and save lives.”

He also criticised what he described as efforts by powerful interests to delay meaningful climate action.

“There are powerful interests desperate to protect their wealth and influence,” he said.

“Science reveals when the solutions they put forward are false. A healthy future lies not in unproven technologies but the fast and fair phase out of fossil fuels.”

Dr Michael said Pacific countries were witnessing coordinated attempts to weaken previously agreed language on climate science and temperature goals across multiple negotiating rooms.

“We are seeing efforts to remove references to IPCC and the 1.5-degree temperature limit,” he said.

“The Paris Agreement does not have temperature goals. It has a temperature goal of 1.5 degree.”

Questioning why countries were seeking to revisit previously agreed decisions, he added: “If it’s a pre-agreed text, why are we renegotiating an agreed decision?”

Dr Michael warned that the challenge extended beyond formal negotiations.

“We are seeing a very coordinated attack across rooms and this is not only happening inside the rooms, but also outside the room” he said.

He pointed to what he described as a growing “polluted narrative” suggesting that countries must choose between following science and pursuing equity.

“We reject this notion,” he said.

“Science and equity for us as PSIDS are interlinked.”

Pacific nations say defending science remains essential to protecting vulnerable communities and ensuring climate decisions are grounded in evidence rather than political convenience.

“This is how we fight for outcomes that are based in science.

“We can’t solve everything in the process today, but with groups represented here we can fight for science to stay at its heart,” Dr Michael said.

Pacific civil society organisations have warned that attempts to weaken the role of science in international climate negotiations risk undermining climate justice and the ability of vulnerable nations to prepare for an increasingly uncertain future.

Speaking at the Defend the Science press conference during the United Nations June Climate Meetings (SB64) in Bonn, Dr Sindra Sharma, the International Policy Lead of the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN), said science remains the foundation upon which Pacific communities build their climate responses and future planning.

Dr Sharma, representing more than 260 Pacific civil society organisations across the Blue Pacific, stressed that for Pacific Island nations, exceeding the 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming threshold is not merely a scientific projection but a lived reality with devastating consequences.

“For us, overshoot is not a pathway; it is a harm event,” she said.

“It is something that happens to people, to reefs, to cyclone seasons, to the mothers and grandmothers and daughters to whom the harm lands the hardest.”

Dr Sharma said Pacific communities have observed the impacts of climate change for generations, long before they were documented in scientific studies.

“Our people have spoken these truths long before they were measured, studied or validated,” she said.

“What we are seeing now is science listening more deeply and learning from other ways of knowing and evolving in the process.”

She noted that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plays a critical role in translating generations of Indigenous and local observations into evidence-based assessments that inform global decision-making.
“It takes what Pacific communities have observed across thousands of years; the currents, the seasons, the silences where certain birds used to be; and it places that reality into assessed literature that the world cannot ignore,” she said.

“When we say 1.5 degrees is a survival threshold, that is not politics. That is the ocean measured.”

Dr Sharma stressed that scientific findings establish the minimum obligations required from the international community to address climate change.

“There is a floor of obligation. There is a floor of consequence, and below these floors, no agreement is legitimate. No outcome is just,” she said.

“Science built that floor, and science names what is already happening. It tells us exactly how little time we have.”

She warned that efforts to delay scientific assessments or weaken their influence on climate negotiations would disproportionately affect vulnerable nations, including those in the Pacific.

“When anyone in these negotiations suggests we delay the science or soften its connection to the decisions we are here to make, I want them to understand what that means in practice.

“When you deny us the science, you deny us the ability to come here on a level playing field and you deny us the ability to plan for our own uncertain future,” she said.

Dr Sharma said the erosion of scientific foundations within the climate process could have far-reaching consequences across all areas of climate action.

“We know what to do,” she said.

“When we start to erode the base effect that will enable us to do that, then were going to erode every single agenda item that were working towards to enable us as a collective community to be able to progress into a really uncertain future.”

Addressing concerns surrounding the IPCC’s ongoing Seventh Assessment Report (AR7), Dr Sharma sought to clarify the panel’s role, noting that it does not generate research itself but assesses existing scientific and technical literature from around the world.

“It doesn’t produce literature. It assesses existing literature,” she said.

She welcomed efforts to increase the diversity of knowledge and perspectives included in future assessments, particularly from developing countries and Indigenous communities.

“AR7 will carry more diverse voices than any report before it. More Global South knowledge, more of what it means to live inside a climate and not above it,” she said.

Dr Sharma also encouraged researchers, practitioners and communities to contribute knowledge that can be assessed by the IPCC in future reports.

“It’s our responsibility to develop the literature that can be assessed by the IPCC,” she said.

“If you want to see your concerns, publish it. It doesn’t have to be peer-reviewed, and it will be assessed. That’s why the IPCC is important.”

As negotiators in Bonn prepare the groundwork for COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, Pacific advocates say defending scientific integrity remains essential to ensuring climate decisions reflect the realities facing communities on the frontlines of the crisis.