At first, people put their hopes high for a big leap forward in the climate talks at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), but the agenda was set clear: "No further discussion on climate change, other issues first". If we now look back to the outcome of WSSD it is terrible to say but the issue that was not on the agenda was one of the few positive outcomes of the meeting. The fact that several countries in the run up of the summit have ratified while others have announced their intention to do so imminently reached world press. Countries also used the "Plan of implementation’ to urge non ratifiers to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol.  So here we are, a few weeks after a very unsatisfactory WSSD, confronted with COP8 which has got not much attention so far.

On the agenda we can find funding for adaptation on climate change, technology transfer, capacity building, public awareness and adverse effects of climate change. This will be in the framework of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) financial review mechanism, the special climate change fund, the adaptation fund and the least developed countries fund. Again on the agenda is adequacy of commitments. Discussion on this has been postponed since COP4, and the question is if governments will be brave enough to discuss this now? Other issues are sinks in the CDM, the discussion of the third assessment report, the Canadian clean energy question and the request from certain countries to minimise the adverse effects of climate change on trade.

The developing countries would like to see the COP 8 negotiations with a focus on adaptation. Being held in India makes this request even stronger. Everybody acknowledge that so far the Kyoto Protocol has focussed attention to measures to address climate change through climate change mitigation. With the current scientific information, we also know that even if we would succeed in the implementation of it, climate change is happening and we can not avoid certain negative effects of it. It is therefore necessary that governments look into the institutional aspects of adaptation. This does not however, mean that the attention should be taken completely off mitigation strategies, but both policy developments should go hand in hand in the negotiations.

Funding-and the lack of it-will likely be at the core of every discussion. At Rio industrialised countries promised to give seven-tenths of one percent of their gross domestic product in overseas aid, but to date only the Nordic countries and the Netherlands have kept that promise. Actually development aid from rich countries has declined, as a share of the total output from 0.35 percent of national income in the early 1990s to 0.22 percent in 2000. This even as industrialised economies, measured by annual output, grew by a total of more than $10 trillion during the 1990s. In the closure of COP6 in Bonn, some countries of which the EU put forward the guarantee of money for the three funds under the protocol. They foresee $410 million before 2005. More should come through the fraction of the proceeds from CDM projects due to the adaptation funds, but nobody can foresee how much this will be (possible $10 million before 2012).