India, June 19 -- The Bonn climate conference - the mid-year climate review - serves as a prelude to the annual Conference of Parties (CoP) . To that end, the stormy start to the ongoing mid-year review in the German city is not good augury. On the first day, developing nations clashed with developed nations - Donald Trump-governed US is absent from the talks - over two inclusions to the conference agenda proposed by the former: discussions on climate finance under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, and on unilateral trade measures with climate goals in mind.

The Like Minded Developing Nations (LMDC) bloc that includes India had demanded that climate finance as well as trade measures such as the carbon border adjustment mechanism be tak...