| By John Ainger As climate delegates walked into Bonn’s World Conference Center on the first Monday after the US attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, they were serenaded on loudspeaker by Doris Day’s “Que Sera Sera.” Whatever will be, will be. It aptly summed up the mood of even the most veteran negotiators, who know that, with less than five months to go before United Nations climate talks in Brazil, keeping the world’s focus on the battle against global warming will be a herculean task. US President Donald Trump is withdrawing the world’s largest historical emitter from the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change for a second time. The world is gripped by multiple conflicts, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the conflict between Israel and Iran. Climate has slipped down the priority list and the multilateral foundation on which the Paris climate accord was built, is creaking. This year’s summit, taking place in the Amazonian city of Belem, marks the 10-year anniversary of the UN talks in Paris, where countries committed to keeping global warming below 2C, and ideally below 1.5C. Yet the world now finds itself in a very different place. “It is easy to succumb to the destruction and despair around us,” said Anne Rasmussen, lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States. “It is imperative that we amplify to the world [how] very real this climate crisis is, even as we fall further and further behind.” The two-week talks in Bonn gather thousands of climate technocrats, whose job it is to lay the foundation for a successful outcome at the main event of the year: the 30th UN-convened Conference of the Parties, or COP30. Unlike last year, which had a clear mandated goal — boosting climate finance — it’s still not clear what Brazil will need, or is aiming, to deliver. For hosts, the uphill battle begins now. Before the summit, all 193 countries need to submit so-called Nationally Determined Contributions, NDCs, which detail how they plan to meet their share of the Paris Agreement goal. So far, less than 30 have done so and two of the biggest emitters — the European Union and China — are not among them.  Delegates during COP21 near Paris in 2015. Photographer: Patrick Kovarik/Getty Images Those plans will then be compiled and presented by November to show just how far off the world is from the 1.5C objective. Even the most optimistic experts expect there to still be a significant gap. Brazil is under pressure to lay out a plan to close it, yet it risks a fight between climate-ambitious countries and fossil fuel producers, like Saudi Arabia, that could derail negotiations. “The big question is how Brazil will deal with the problem when we fall short on NDCs,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at think tank E3G and a veteran COP-watcher. “Are we gonna say, ‘Too bad, we lost the planet,’ and go home?” The complexity of the current geopolitical situation was laid bare early, when UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cancelled a speech he was due to make this week on climate action in order to deal with the fallout from the US strikes on Iran. “We have military wars, we have trade wars. The attention of our political leaders has been devoted to other topics,” said Ana Toni, the chief executive officer of COP30, in an interview. “But we’ll also be able at COP30 to reinforce the multilateral system on climate that we need so much.” Trump’s attendance at a NATO summit in the Netherlands also overshadowed negotiations in Bonn, as NATO leaders agreed to boost defense spending to 5% of GDP. The worry is that it will come at the expense of climate finance, just months after developed countries agreed to provide poorer nations with $300 billion by 2035. Brazil and Azerbaijan are due to present at COP30 a roadmap of how to further increase that figure to $1.3 trillion. Read more: Defense Budgets Need to Fight War and Climate Change, Experts Say  Yalchin Rafiyev Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg Much of the heavy lifting is expected to fall to multilateral development banks, like the IMF and the World Bank, but they were conspicuous by their absence in Bonn. According to Yalchin Rafiyev, Azerbaijan’s lead negotiator for their COP29 summit, out of almost 120 submissions for the finance roadmap, just two came from MDBs. “Everything tells us that we should be prepared for a worst-case scenario,” Rafiyev said in an interview. “I hope that there is still room for us to pressure those who are expected to provide this finance to stick to their commitments.” Yet the biggest elephant in the room was the superpower that wasn’t there. The US didn’t send a delegation to Bonn for the first time in decades, as it readies to leave the Paris Agreement early next year. Saudi Arabia took over its office space, a moment of symbolism that could define how COP30 unfolds. For more on the geopolitics threatening to upstage COP, head to Bloomberg.com. There was one issue more than any other that overshadowed climate talks in Bonn this week: whether Belem is ready for COP. The Amazon metropolis is on the hook to host a world leaders summit and two weeks of negotiations with more than 50,000 delegates in attendance. Recent COP summits have become renowned for price gouging, sending hotel prices spiraling to hundreds of dollars per night. But the concerns this year surpassed those. One developed country negotiator said they had been quoted $1 million for their team of 25 delegates to stay in a five star hotel that has not yet been built, working out at over $2,000 per night.  Aerial view of Parque da Cidade, the main venue for COP30, under construction in Belém, Brazil, in early May 2025. Photographer: Alessandro Falco The concern is that the governments of developing countries and small island states will have to send smaller teams -- or none at all -- while civil society groups from those nations will be forced to stay home. Two booking platforms, one run by the government and one by a contractor, were still not available at the time of publication. Both the Alliance of Small Island States and the Africa Group of Negotiators complained to the COP30 presidency about the lack of access, according to letters seen by Bloomberg. Some negotiators gathered in Bonn were still calling for negotiations to be moved to another city. Brazil is “totally committed” to having both the world leaders summit and negotiations in Belem, Ana Toni, the COP30 CEO, said, adding that Brazil had passed laws last week so that attendees are protected against being ripped off. “I regret that this has happened.”—John Ainger | 
