Just hours after the conclusion of the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France, climate negotiators converged in Bonn, Germany, for their annual mid-year session aimed at shaping the agenda for COP30, which will take place in Belém, Brazil.

Over the next 10 days, delegates and stakeholders are gathering at the World Conference Centre in Bonn for the 62nd session of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB62).

The talks are designed to build momentum from COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, and lay the foundation for key decisions to be adopted in Brazil.

This year’s session is set to tackle a broad range of climate-related issues, including the ongoing effort to finalize indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA).

The discussions come at a time when communities worldwide are grappling with worsening climate impacts.

Participants will also focus on charting a fair transition away from fossil fuels, aligning efforts under the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap to unlock $1.3 trillion in climate financing, and ensuring mitigation goals stay on track.

The Bonn climate talks aim to push forward negotiations on several critical fronts ahead of COP30 in Brazil, with delegates focusing on a broad agenda that includes finalizing indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA).

As climate impacts intensify across the globe, the meeting comes at a pivotal moment.

Delegates will also discuss strategies for a fair transition away from fossil fuels, ways to unlock US$1.3 trillion in climate finance under the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap, and measures to stay on course with global mitigation efforts.

Speaking in a Q&A with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) Earth Negotiations Bulletin, climate talks analyst Jennifer Bansard noted that the GGA will be a central topic in the UNFCCC discussions.

Although the GGA was introduced under the 2015 Paris Agreement, Bansard pointed out that its broad objectives.

boosting adaptive capacity, enhancing resilience, and reducing vulnerability have made it challenging for countries to define concrete actions or track meaningful progress.

“To address this, parties at COP28 in Dubai adopted a framework with clearer targets under the GGA,” she explained. “These targets are meant to guide countries in their adaptation efforts and provide a structure for monitoring progress.”

There are targets under the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) that span key sectors such as water, agriculture and food security, public health, biodiversity, infrastructure, and even cultural heritage.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has also laid out objectives for every stage of the adaptation process ranging from assessing climate risks and formulating responsive strategies to putting in place systems for monitoring, evaluating, and learning from adaptation outcomes.

To track progress, parties have been working to define a set of indicators aligned with these targets. According to climate policy expert Jennifer Bansard in an interview with the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin, the effort has been extensive.

“Since COP28, there have been multiple technical meetings involving experts, and at one point the list of potential indicators ballooned to about 9,000 clearly unmanageable,” Bansard said.

She explained that the process of narrowing down the indicators has been guided by practical considerations such as data availability, existing baselines, and whether the indicators can be aggregated across different governance levels.

There has also been a focus on ensuring that certain metrics can be disaggregated by demographic or socioeconomic factors, providing deeper insights into how adaptation is affecting various populations.

Negotiators meeting in Bonn will now review a “somewhat streamlined” list of around 490 indicators. While still extensive, the expectation is that further negotiations will help trim the list and explore how the indicators might interlink.

“Adaptation progress has been slow, and reaching a consensus has proven difficult. It’s been a decade since the Paris Agreement was signed, yet we’re still trying to finalize the GGA’s indicators,” Bansard remarked.

She also flagged a growing challenge facing climate diplomacy tightening national budgets and waning support for multilateralism. “We’ve seen even well-resourced countries scale back their participation in global environmental summits. That could affect how responsive and dynamic these negotiations are moving forward.”

In addition to wrapping up unfinished business from COP29 in Baku, negotiators in Bonn will be focusing on key technical discussions to ensure that COP30 in Belém, Brazil, delivers concrete results.

Brazil, the host of the upcoming summit, is stepping up diplomatic efforts to build consensus on two unresolved issues from Baku: securing a fair transition away from fossil fuels and concluding the global stocktake a comprehensive assessment of collective progress on climate action.

Brazil’s lead climate envoy, Lilian Chagas, said her delegation is aiming for “substantive progress” in Bonn, particularly on the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) and finalizing recommendations from the 2023 Global Stocktake.

The goal is to have these outcomes formally adopted at COP30 later this year.

The Global Goal on Adaptation includes specific targets across vital areas such as water resources, food and agriculture, public health, biodiversity, infrastructure, and cultural heritage.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) further outlines benchmarks for every stage of the adaptation cycle ranging from identifying risks and developing responsive plans to establishing systems for monitoring, evaluation, and learning to track progress.

In line with these objectives, parties have also initiated efforts to develop indicators that will measure advancement toward the stated targets.

Since COP28, multiple expert consultations have been held to compile a list of possible indicators for tracking adaptation progress.

At one stage, the list had grown to an overwhelming 9,000 options, climate analyst Jennifer Bansard noted.

To streamline the process, experts applied specific criteria to filter the list focusing on factors such as data availability, the presence of established baselines, and the ability to aggregate indicators across various levels.

Additionally, parties examined which indicators could be broken down by demographic and socioeconomic factors to better understand how different population groups are adapting to climate change, Bansard explained.

At last month’s UN Climate Week in Panama, negotiators revisited two contentious issues: the role of Indigenous communities in climate action and the intersection of economic drivers and social protection in a just transition.

During COP29 in Baku, talks became deadlocked as countries disagreed over the scope of fairness that the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) should address.

Disputes also arose over whether climate finance should be part of the discussion and if formal texts should reference the shift away from fossil fuels when advancing the Global Stocktake (GST).

Brazil’s chief climate negotiator, Lilian Chagas, attributed the lack of resolution at COP29 to prolonged and difficult negotiations on the new global finance goal. She now hopes to inject a renewed “sense of urgency” into ongoing talks, emphasizing the importance of securing some early agreements ahead of COP30.

“These decisions, made mid-year, would demonstrate that the COP process remains functional and resilient,” Chagas said, stressing the need to “harvest early wins” instead of deferring everything to the Brazil summit in November.

The GST, conducted in 2023, was a global review of climate action that concluded while countries have slowed the pace of global warming, their efforts still fall short of meeting the 1.5°C target. At COP28 in Dubai