Negotiators are heading towards the annual UN climate conference with a tremendous workload to overcome, after an emergency effort in Bangkok to flesh out the Paris Agreement implementation guidelines closed on Sunday 9 September with “limited” and “uneven” progress. The additional talks in the Thai capital were scheduled after mid-year negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bonn, Germany, failed to yield sufficient results on the Paris “rulebook” to be considered on track for the year-end deadline. (See Bridges Weekly, 17 May 2018 ) Under the landmark climate agreement, reached in Paris in December 2015, all parties have committed to climate actions to limit the collective rise in global average temperatures to well below two degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels, while making their best efforts to hold the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. (See BioRes Paris Update, 13 December 2015 ) The details for implementing the Paris accord were left for negotiation at future talks, with the deadline set for this year’s 24 th Conference of the Parties (COP), taking place in Katowice, Poland, from 2-14 December. Negotiators seek faster, balanced progress In Bangkok, officials met in various formal and informal settings under the Ad...