Policy Forum Pod

On this episode, we discuss the deliberations, points of contention and wider implications of the Bonn Climate Change Conference, which recently took place in Germany. Dr Siobhan McDonnell who was part of the negotiations joins us for this podcast.The Bonn Climate Change Conference aims to lay the groundwork for the political decisions required at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) at the end of the year.Dr McDonnell describes the “real and palpable grief in the room” when new climate science was presented to the Alliance of Small Island States that showed predictions are now twice as bad in 2100 compared to what was presented in the latest IPCC report.Despite this new data, a backwards step has been taken in the difficult negotiations. There’s now no longer an agreement on including the IPCC report as an agenda item at COP28. She says that the latest climate science is horrific and apocalyptic and the fact that negotiations cannot “even begin from that established understanding is very hard.” She also