Global Climate Talks Resumed This Week in Germany, For the First Time in 30 Years Without the United States

At a Bonn conference on climate, some participants say there’s a chance to make progress with the world’s biggest economy, America, no longer in the room.

For the first time since the United Nations started its annual climate talks in 1995, the United States is not sending an official government delegation to one of the biannual global negotiation sessions.

In Bonn, Germany, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is currently holding the annual intersessional round of talks involving various subsidiary technical groups. This is the halfway point between last year’s COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan and the upcoming COP30 in Belem, Brazil in November. 

The UNFCCC’s secretariat wrote via email that “The U.S. administration currently has no representatives participating at SB62,” which was confirmed by the U.S. State Department. The State Department said via email that it has “no plans to send a delegation.”

“I can 100 percent guarantee that the U.S. has been represented at every other meeting, even during Trump one,” said University of Cambridge climate researcher Joanna Depledge, who has closely tracked the history of the U.N. framework negotiations. “Even when [President] George W. Bush refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the delegation sat in on Kyoto Protocol issues.”

In his first days in office in 2016, President Donald Trump moved to end all U.S. climate financing, reneging on pledges to various international funds and disengaging the federal government from international climate collaboration, including the Paris climate agreement. 

But there is a large coalition, called America Is All In, of representatives from cities, states, faith groups, tribes, universities, industries and nonprofits in the United States that remains engaged in the U.N. process. The coalition aims to advance some climate progress in the absence of federal support. 

Civil society has a crucial role in the global conversation right now, said Analyah Schlaeger dos Santos of Minneapolis. She is at the Bonn talks representing the U.S. Climate Action Network, an advocacy group for which she is co-chair of the international policy committee.

“The first COP ended just a few hours after I was born,” she said. “Elders often don’t understand that, for people our age, the climate crisis, and all the related political and social tensions have been part of our entire life.”

It is frustrating and perplexing that the world and its major economies haven’t decisively tackled the visible problems of a warming planet, she said.

From the conversations in Bonn, Schlaeger dos Santos said, no one is particularly surprised by the no-show from Washington, and some of the people she talked with think it may not have much of an effect. What she’s heard is there will be delays in climate action whether the U.S. is at the talks or not, because of resistance from other countries.

“I’ve been to four COPs now,” she said, “and I’m still hearing the same thing. That is an unfortunate reality.”

Can The World Move Ahead?

Still, she said, many conversations in Bonn are about America’s climate policy, or lack thereof. 

“I’ve been here for five days, and every single day, in conversations, it’s ‘the U.S. this and the U.S. that,’” Schlaeger dos Santos said, adding that the U.S. played a pivotal role in driving global warming. “We’ve had our fingers in every pot. We’re one of the wealthiest countries in the world, We’re the largest producer of fossil fuels.”

People from developing countries with whom she’s spoken said they don’t expect much from the United States when it comes to critical global climate finance discussions that will be at the center of the November COP30 global climate summit in Belem.

“What I’m hearing is folks from the Global South are upset, and rightfully so,” she said. “And they’re also saying, ‘Hey, the biggest blocker and the biggest bully isn’t in the room. Let’s see what we can get done while they’re not here.’ ”

The United States rejected the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which would have legally mandated emissions cuts in developed countries. Over the 30-year history of the climate talks, researchers have identified Saudi Arabia as a key player in systematic efforts to block the UNFCCC from directly addressing the need to stop burning fossil fuels. 

“Going into Bonn, we knew that the U.S. would have no government presence here, but that civil society is still going to be here,” she said. 

One of her missions at the conference as a representative of U.S. civil society, she said, is to affirm that parts of the U.S. population are trying to build more public support for multilateral climate policy. But she acknowledged that won’t happen without a massive cultural shift.

The U.S. produces about 11 percent of global annual greenhouse gas emissions. Depledge, the Cambridge climate researcher, said the climate talks will still advance if enough other countries work with each other toward specific goals. 

“The process will be smoother, especially if some of the laggards lose some of their leverage without the U.S.,” Depledge said. 

But in the long run, U.S. absence could push the UNFCCC process to the edge of irrelevance, she added. “The Kyoto Protocol, initially forged ahead with the support of every other country on the planet, but ultimately floundered without the U.S.”

“In this respect,” Depledge said, “whether Trump withdraws from the UNFCCC itself or not is very significant. If he does, it will be very difficult, nigh impossible, according to some lawyers, for the U.S. to rejoin the formal process. But I guess what really matters for the global response to climate change is what happens on the ground. In the US. It’s not looking good at the moment.”

Cover photo:  Delegates gather at the World Conference Center for a U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting. For the first time in 30 years, there won’t be any negotiators from the United States participating in the annual climate talks in Bonn, Germany. Credit: Lara Murillo/U.N. Climate Change