During the two-week negotiations, topics such as the global stocktake, climate adaptation, mitigation, loss and damage, means of implementation, and historical responsibility of developed countries came up continuously for discussions and disagreements. Only in the final days of the conference was a compromise found, and countries agreed to resolve the agenda issue, avoiding a potential false start at COP28 in Dubai.

At the summit’s opening, a meeting agenda could not be adopted because of a lack of consensus among the Parties. The main issue at stake was the difference in the positions between developed and developing countries, with developing countries requesting more emphasis on addressing climate finance.

The purpose of these mid-year negotiations is to help countries advance their understanding of technical issues and set the work agenda for the remainder of the year. The conference also identified how close countries are to reaching key decisions at COP28.

On the carbon markets, negotiations revolved around articles 6.2 and 6.4 of the Paris Agreement. Article 6 aims to lay out the rules for the new carbon market and determine how a country’s surplus emissions reductions, called Internationally Transferable (Climate) Mitigation Outcomes (ITMO), can be traded between countries and corporations. For rainforest nations, these trades will provide critical climate finance to help forest conservation and transition to sustainable economies.

During the summit, there was a clear willingness by all parties to make good progress in moving forward the issue to operationalize art. 6. In addition, Parties made quite it clear that there is no space for carbon avoidance under article 6 for forests. The math is clear; less than 500 Gigatons of emission is left to avoid a temperature increase above the 1.5 degree Paris Agreement goal. There are approximately three thousand gigatons of discovered fossil fuel and 1000 in forests, there is no space for avoidance. Buy only real reductions and real removals, “said Federica Bietta, Managing Director, Coalition for Rainforest Nations.