As the mid-year UN Climate Change negotiations in Bonn, Germany, enter the final stretch, the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group on Climate Change has raised alarm over the slow and insufficient pace of global climate action.
According to the LDCs, the current efforts in the climate talks are dangerously inadequate to protect the more than one billion people living on the frontlines of the climate crisis.
The group is particularly concerned by the continued delay in submitting updated and ambitious 1.5°C-aligned Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—especially by countries whose emissions reductions are critical to closing the gap—and the lack of ambition in many of those submitted to date.
At the same time, progress on finalising measurable indicators for the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) remains worryingly stagnant.
“We are already enduring the most devastating consequences of climate change, cyclones, floods, droughts yet support continues to arrive too little and too late,” said Evans Njewa, Chair of the LDC Group. “The decisions made here in Bonn must reflect the urgency of our reality. Time is not on our side.”
In approaching the 2025 deadline for submitting new or updated NDCs, the LDCs have reiterated their call for NDCs that align with the 1.5°C temperature goal and reflect each country’s fair share of the global effort.
With only 24 Parties having submitted their NDCs to date, the group urged developed countries and major emitters to lead by example through timely, science-based, and adequately financed submissions.
On climate finance, the LDCs continue to express deep disappointment at the outcome of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), with weak and vague commitments that risk failing to scale-up funding and improve access to climate finance, particularly for vulnerable countries.
“The finance flows we are seeing do not match the scale of the crisis. We urge the COP30 Presidency to ensure a transparent and credible roadmap toward delivering $1.3 trillion in climate finance by 2035. This roadmap must provide clarity on sources, timelines, and accountability mechanisms,” said Njewa.
As a concrete outcome of the Bonn climate session and COP30 in Belém, th LDCs call for a commitment to triple adaptation finance by 2030, stressing that the current goal on adaptation is disconnected from the realities faced in vulnerable countries.
As negotiations on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) continue, the group has called for the establishment of robust indicators to measure progress across key sectors such as food, water, health, biodiversity, and resilient infrastructure.
Four years since its establishment, the Mitigation Work Programme designed to urgently scale up ambition and action in this critical decade has severely drifted off track.
“We are on a bumpy trajectory that could collapse this process as we note persistent resistance to addressing mitigation issues holistically, especially those linked to finance,” said the group.
On Just Transition, the LDCs emphasised that their priorities differ significantly from those of developed economies.
“For us, a just transition means universal access to clean energy, enhanced energy security, green jobs, and most urgently comprehensive debt reform for our economies, many of which are facing unsustainable debt burdens,” said their statement. “The UAE Just Transition Work Programme must not become a one-size-fits-all framework. If it is fit for purpose, it must centre the voices, needs, and realities of LDCs”.
The Least Developed Countries believe the road to COP30 offers a critical opportunity to restore trust in the multilateral climate process.
That trust, the group says, is hanging in balance; and to rebuild it, developed countries must lead with ambition, finance, and fairness for effective implementation.
The world cannot afford to let the most vulnerable fall through the cracks, said the group.