Bonn Climate Deal Within Reach, Punts Many Decisions to 2018

International negotiators are on the verge of taking the first concrete steps toward a rule book to implement a global climate accord, including big strides on how to verify the greenhouse gas emissions and the effectiveness of actions nations take.

But the two-week UN summit in Germany essentially punted on many issues, particularly climate finance, suggesting the talks here met, barely, the modest expectations negotiators set out for themselves before coming to Bonn.

Expectations were low in Bonn because one of the decisions nations made in Paris in 2015 was to give their own negotiators until 2018 to complete the ...